POETS' COUNTRY 

EDITED-BY 

-AN DREW- LANG  > 

ILLUSTRATED-BY 

FRANCIS'SWALKER 


LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


Class 


POETS'   COUNTRY 


UNiVE;' 


fedL'' 


DOVE  COTTAGE,  GRASMERE 

Dove  Cottage  was  the  home  of  Wordsworth  for  seven 
years  and  bears  traces  of  his  care.  Many  of  the  flowering 
shrubs  were  planted  by  his  own  hand.  The  stones  laid 
down  in  the  garden  are  steps  up  its  steep  incline  to  a  terrace 
higher  than  the  cottage,  over  which  he  had  a  view  of 
Grasmere  Lake,  and  of  Silver  How  beyond. 

When  Wordsworth  left  Dove  Cottage,  De  Quincey 
resided  in  it  for  many  years. 


POETS'    COUNTKY 

EDITED   BY 

ANDKEW   LANG 

CONTRIBUTORS 

PROF.  J.  CHURTON  COLLINS       .       W.  J.  LOFTIE,  F.S.A. 

E.  HARTLEY  COLERIDGE       .       MICHAEL  MACMILLAN 

ANDREW  LANG 

WITH    FIFTY   ILLUSTRATIONS    IN    COLOUR    BY 

FRANCIS    S.   WALKER 


PHILADELPHIA:   J.   B.   LIPPINCOTT  COMPANY 
EDINBURGH:    T.    C.    &   E.    C.    JACK 

1907 


EDITOR'S  PREFACE 

THE  purpose  of  this  volume,  as  the  title  indicates,  is  to 
trace  the  relations  of  poets  with  the  aspects  of  "  their 
ain  countrie,"  or  with  the  scenes  where  they  built  their 
homes,  or  pitched  their  transient  camps.  "  A  wanderer 
is  man  from  his  birth,"  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  writes, 
and  the  habits  of  many  poets  have  been  nomadic. 
There  is  little  of  his  native  Devonshire  in  Coleridge ; 
Sussex  has  no  conspicuous  part  in  the  making  of 
Shelley ;  the  Muse  of  Byron  is  influenced  rather  by 
the  Mediterranean  than  by  Dee  and  Don.  But  other 
poets  are  home-keeping,  like  Wordsworth  and  Scott ; 
their  favourite  scenes  are  those  among  which  they  were 
born  and  spent  their  years  of  boyhood  and  their  later 
lives.  Tennyson,  too,  had  a  strong  attachment  to  his 
native  " Brook  " — in  which,  if  The  Millers  Daughter  be 
autobiographic,  he  was  a  very  idle  angler — and  to  the 
level  wastes  of  the  Lincolnshire  fen  country.  There 
are  poets  who  "  generalise  "  landscape  ;  they  give  us  "  a 
practicable  wood,"  a  pasteboard  cottage,  a  stream  which 


vi  POETS'  COUNTRY 

punctually  "purls,"  and  the  rest  of  the  dfaor  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  Drayton,  on  the  other  hand,  seems 
to  have  had  minute  knowledge  of  every  bourne  and 
beck,  as  well  as  of  every  river,  in  England. 

Some  poets,  anxious,  in  Wordsworth's  phrase,  "to 
write  with  their  eyes  on  the  object,"  take  notes  of 
landscape,  as  painters  make  rapid  pencil  sketches.  To 
take  such  notes  on  aspects  of  the  atmosphere,  of  the 
hills,  woods,  and  even  the  most  retiring  species  of  the 
vegetable  kingdom,  was  the  practice  of  Wordsworth 
and  of  his  sister  Dorothy.  The  ingredients  thus  col- 
lected might  or  might  not  come  handy  in  the  composi- 
tion of  a  poem.  Thus  Dorothy  Wordsworth  would 
chronicle  the  circumstance  that  "the  moon  was 
immensely  large,  the  sky  scattered  over  with  clouds. 
These  soon  closed  in,  contracting  the  dimensions  of 
the  moon  without  concealing  her."  This  note  of 
phenomena  very  familiar  was  made  in  Somerset. 
Coleridge  read  it,  and  did  it  into  blank  verse,  in  a 
pocket-book  : 

Behind  the  thin 

Grey  cloud  that  covered  but  not  hid  the  sky, 
The  round  full  moon  looked  small. 

The  piece  of  local  colour  was  now  ready  for  instant 
use,  in  case  Coleridge  was  writing  a  poem  in  blank 
verse.  Wordsworth  also  exploited  Dorothy's  note,  in 


EDITOR'S  PREFACE  vii 

his  Night -Piece,  lines  1-7.  Finally,  Coleridge,  in 
Cliristabel  (where  the  scene  is  Cumberland),  did  the 
note  afresh  into  four  lines,  in  the  metre  of  that  poem. 
All  this  learning  Mr.  Ernest  Coleridge  provides  in  his 
beautiful  edition  of  ChristabeU  It  is  not  probable  that 
most  of  our  poets  made  notes  in  this  conscientious 
way ;  though  Scott  wrote  down  the  names  of  the 
local  wild-flowers  at  Rokeby,  as  he  was  to  write  a 
poem  with  Rokeby  for  its  centre. 

To  every  poet  his  own  method.  The  artist,  Mr. 
Walker,  has  visited  and  pourtrayed  scenes  familiar  to 
the  singers ;  the  business  of  the  authors  in  this  volume 
has  been  to  study  the  poets'  relations  to  the  landscapes 
with  which  they  were  best  acquainted,  and,  in  some 
instances,  to  describe  these  scenes  in  their  changed 
aspects  of  to-day.  In  other  instances,  notably  in  the 
case  of  Shelley,  the  Poets'  Country  is  the  "Land  of 
Dreams  "  (as  Homer  says),  and  the  sky  and  sea,  which 
are  changeless  in  their  changefulness. 

The  influence  of  the  Nature  which  environed  poets 
in  their  youth  has  not  a  scientifically  calculable  effect 
on  their  genius.  The  mountains  and  the  sea,  as  in 
Wordsworth's  sonnet,  may  inspire  a  love  of  freedom ; 
but,  in  the  case  of  Oliver  Cromwell  (as  Mr.  Matthew 
Arnold  remarked  in  an  early  prize  poem  on  that  states- 

1  Frowde.  London,  1907. 


viii  POETS'  COUNTRY 

man),  the  same  effect  may  be  produced  by  the  flat 
scenery  of  the  Midlands.  The  method  of  Monsieur 
Taine,  and  of  others  who  unhesitatingly  discover,  for 
all  effects,  causes  in  the  local  environment,  is  a  method 
of  merely  popular  science. 

The  Editor  should  perhaps  explain  that  he  was  asked, 
single-handed,  to  write  the  studies  which  accompany  the 
pictures  in  this  volume.  Having  neither  the  leisure 
nor  the  necessary  literary  and  topographical  knowledge, 
he  suggested  that  writers  better  qualified  than  he  should 
be  invited  to  select  the  poets  and  scenes  preferred  by 
them.  He  mentioned  some  names,  and  Mr.  Churton 
Collins,  Mr.  Coleridge,  Mr.  Loftie,  with  Mr.  Macmillan, 
kindly  undertook  their  pleasant  tasks.  The  Editor  has 
not  dreamed  of  suggesting  any  alterations  in  their  ex- 
pressions of  taste  and  opinion  when  (as  will  happen  in 
matters  of  taste)  there  is  some  lack  of  grace  of  con- 
gruity  between  his  impressions  and  those  of  his  fellow- 
workers. 

A.  L. 


ARTIST'S   PREFACE 

THE  pictures  in  this  book  are  of  places  associated  with 
the  poets  either  through  their  lives  or  scenes  that  are 
supposed  to  be  sources  of  their  inspiration. 

The  designs  are  not  presented  as  illustrations  of  the 
words  of  the  poets,  rather  as  backgrounds  characteristic 
of  scenes  that  influenced  their  poetry ;  for  example,  the 
bold  scenery  of  the  Highlands  is  to  Scott  what  the 
gentle  scenery  of  Olney  is  to  Cowper. 

In  some  cases  the  scenes  are  undoubtedly  those 
that  have  been  immortalised  by  their  writings,  notably 
by  Byron  at  Newstead,  Gray  at  Stoke  Poges,  and  I 
believe  Burns  at  the  Ayr  and  Doon,  Wordsworth  at 
the  Lakes,  Coleridge  at  Nether  Stowey  and  the  Quan- 
tocks.  All  of  these  poets  make  direct  reference  to  actual 
places,  and  the  pictures  are  intended  to  be  sympathetic 
representations  of  them. 

Other  places  designed  are  not  mentioned  in  their 
poems,  but  represent  such  scenes  as  they  have  described. 
Some  lines  from  The  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona  seem  to 
have  been  inspired  by  Shakespeare's  love  of  the  Avon, 
and  are  very  characteristic  of  it. 

Some  pictures  are  of  places  in  which  the  poets  lived. 

ix 


x  POETS'  COUNTRY 

That  of  Milton  in  his  garden  at  Chalfont  St.  Giles, 
during  his  blindness,  suggests  his  love  of  flowers,  and 
the  pastoral  landscape  of  the  surrounding  scenes  is 
such  as  he  has  described,  while  the  picture  of  him 
dictating  shows  an  incident  in  his  life's  affliction.  Shake- 
speare's birthplace  and  school,  as  well  as  the  Hathaway 
cottage  and  church,  are  under  this  head  of  associations ; 
also  Eton  and  Bisham,  as  connected  with  Shelley. 

The  artist's  efforts  on  the  whole  have  been  to 
carry  out  pictorially  in  every  case  some  effect  that 
came  under  his  own  observation,  while  painting  each 
scene  in  the  spirit  of  Coleridge's  words  on  "  the  poetry 
of  Nature  " : — 

During  the  first  year  that  Mr.  Wordsworth  and  I  were  neigh- 
bours, our  conversation  turned  frequently  on  the  two  cardinal 
points  of  poetry — the  power  of  exciting  the  sympathy  of  a  reader 
by  a  faithful  adherence  to  the  truth  of  Nature,  and  the  power  of 
giving  the  interest  of  novelty  by  the  modifying  colour  of  imagina- 
tion. The  sudden  charm  which  accidents  of  light  and  shade,  which 
moonlight  or  sunlight,  diffused  over  a  known  and  familiar  landscape, 
appeared  to  represent  the  practicability  of  combining  both ;  these 
are  the  poetry  of  Nature. — Coleridge's  Biographia  Liter  aria. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

SHAKESPEARE          .......         1 

PROFESSOR  J.  CHURTON  COLLINS 

WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH      .  .  .  .  .  .25 

E.  H.  COLERIDGE 

BYRON       .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .46 

E.  H.  COLERIDGE 

S.  T.  COLERIDGE  .  .  .  .  .  .  .66 

E.  H.  COLERIDGE 

SCOTT        ........        83 

ANDREW  LANG 

SHELLEY  AND  NATURE       .  .  .  .  .  .100 

ANDREW  LANG 

MILTON     .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .116 

PROFESSOR  J.  CHURTON  COLLINS 

Sm  JOHN  DENHAM  AND  "COOPER'S  HILL"  .  .  .127 

PROFESSOR  J.  CHURTON  COLLINS 

WALLER,  COWLEY,  AND  DRYDEN  .  .  .  .  .133 

PROFESSOR  J.  CHURTON  COLLINS 

THE  DESCRIPTIVE  POETRY  OF  THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY  .     140 

PROFESSOR  J.  CHURTON  COLLINS 

POPE  AND  THE  MINOR  POETS  OF  THE  AUGUSTAN  AGE      .  .150 

PROFESSOR  J.  CHURTON  COLLINS 
xi 


xii  POETS'  COUNTRY 

PAGE 

AKENSIDE,    ARMSTRONG,    SHENSTONE,    GRAINGER,    MALLET,    AND 

SMOLLETT       .  .  .  .  .  .  .172 

PROFESSOR  J.  CHURTON  COLLINS 

GOLDSMITH,  COLLINS,  AND  GRAY   .  .  .  .  .177 

PROFESSOR  J.  CHURTON  COLLINS 

FALCONER   AND   MARINE  SCENERY,   MASON,  THE   WARTONS,    AND 

BEATTIE          .......     191 

PROFESSOR  J.  CHURTON  COLLINS 

LANGHORNE,    JAGO,    SCOTT    OF     AMWELL,     CHARLOTTE     SMITH, 

BOWLES,  CROWE,  AND  HURDIS  ....     204 

PROFESSOR  J.  CHURTON  COLLINS 

WILLIAM  COWPER  .  .  .  .  .  .  .215 

PROFESSOR  J.  CHURTON  COLLINS 

CRABBE  AND  ALDBOROUGH  .....     239 

PROFESSOR  J.  CHURTON  COLLINS 

TENNYSON.  .......     253 

PROFESSOR  J.  CHURTON  COLLINS 

CHAUCER  AT  ELTHAM         ......     274 

REV.  W.  J.  LOFTIE 

OLIVER  GOLDSMITH  AT  HYDE  HOUSE  FARM          .  .  .     289 

REV.  W.  J.   LOFTIE 

KEATS  AT  ENFIELD  ...  .  300 

REV.  W.  J.   LOFTIE 

EDMUND  SPENSER  AT  PENSHURST  .  .  .  .313 

REV.  W.  J.  LOFTIE 

THOMAS  MOORE  IN  WICKLOW        ....  325 

REV.  W.  J.  LOFTIE 

BURNS        .  .  .  .  .  .  .  339 

MICHAEL  MACMILLAN 

INDEX    ....  359 


LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Dove  Cottage,  Grasmere  .....     Frontispiece 

Shakespeare's  Birthplace  ...  .2 

The  Grammar  School,  Stratford-on-Avon  .             .         8 

Ann  Hatha way's  Cottage                .  14 

The  Avon  at  Stratford      ...  .20 

Trinity  Church,  Stratford-on-Avon            .  .       24 

Alfoxden  ....  26 

The  River  Eden  .                           .  .                           .32 

Rydal  Water         ...  .36 

Grasmere  Church .              .             .             .  .             .             .42 

Newstead  Abbey  .             .  ...       48 

Garden  of  Newstead          .  .54 

The  Lake  at  Newstead     .  .       60 

Byron's  "  Tomb "  at  Harrow         .  .                           .64 

Coleridge's  Cottage,  Nether  Stowey  .       66 

The  Grove,  Highgate        .  .74 

The  Quantock  Hills  .       80 

The  Pass  of  Leny              .  .       84 

The  Falls  of  Leny  .       88 

Ashiestiel               .             .  -92 

Melrose  Abbey      .             .             .             .  .             .             -98 

Eton  College  Chapel  from  the  Thames     .  .104 

xiii 


xiv  POETS'  COUNTRY 


PAGE 


Bisham  Abbey       .  .112 

Chalfont  St.  Giles,  Bucks .  .  .  .  .116 

Milton's  Cottage  and  Garden,  Chalfont  St.  Giles  .  .120 

Interior  of  Milton's  Cottage          .  .  .  .  .126 

The  Thames  and  Eton  from  the  Terrace,  Windsor  Castle  .     128 

Prior  Park,  Bath  .  .  .  .  .  .  .152 

Windsor  Castle  from  near  Eton  Lock       .  .  .156 

The  Thames  at  Richmond  from  the  Terrace         .  .  .     160 

Stoke  Poges  Manor  .  .  .  .  .178 

The  Hall  of  Stoke  Manor  .  .  .182 

The  Poets' Walk  at  Eton  .  .186 

Stoke  Poges  Churchyard  .  .  .  .  .188 

The  Cenotaph  at  Stoke  Poges       .  .  .  .  .190 

Winchester  ...  .  .198 

Olney        ...  .  .     216 

The  Ouse  at  Olney  .  .  .     232 

St.  John's  College,  Cambridge      .....     256 

Lincolnshire  Coast,  Mablethorpe  .....     264 

Blackdown  Common          .  ...     272 

Kingbury  Green,  near  London      .....     290 

Farmhouse  in  Hyde  Lane  .....     296 

The  Vale  of  Health,  Hampstead  .  .  304 

Milfield  Lane,  Highgate  .  .  .  .  .  .312 

The  Vale  of  Avoca  ......     328 

The  Blackwater  at  Lismore  Castle  .  .  .     336 

Ellisland  ....  ...     340 

The  River  Boon   ....  .  346 

The  River  Ayr  at  Failford  .....     352 


SHAKESPEARE 

IT  seems  to  be  with  Shakespeare  as  it  is  with  Nature. 
As  she  fashions  in  her  impartial  thoroughness  of 
workmanship,  or  reveals  herself  in  her  infinity  of  phases, 
so  he  depicts.  Like  hers  his  touch  is  as  precise  and 
finished  in  minutiae  as  in  what  is  most  eminent  and 
impressive.  Responsive  and  faithful  to  her  in  her 
most  appalling  and  terrific  manifestations,  as  in  the 
thunderstorm  in  Lear  and  the  tempest  at  sea  in  Pericles, 
in  her  scenes  of  awe-compelling  grandeur  as  in  his 
picture  of  Dover  Cliff,  in  her  phenomena  of  mingled 
grandeur  and  loveliness,  her  dawning  and  setting  suns, 
her  rivers,  her  seas,  her  landscapes,  he  is  equally 
faithful  to  her  in  his  representations  of  her  minutest 
and  most  insignificant  creations.  In  a  truth  very 
literal  it  may  be  said  of  Shakespeare  as  it  was  said  of 
Wordsworth's  Wanderer — 

Early  had  he  learned 
To  reverence  the  volume  that  displays 
The  mystery,  the  life  which  cannot  die. 

There  did  he  see  the  writing ; — all  things  there 
Breathed  immortality,  revolving  life 
And  greatness  still  revolving  ;  infinite  : 

1  T» 


1 


2  POETS'  COUNTRY 

There  littleness  was  not ;  the  least  of  things 
Seemed  infinite  ;  and  there  his  spirit  shaped 
Her  prospects.  .... 

Thence  he  learned 

In  many  a  calmer  hour  of  sober  thought 
To  look  on  Nature  with  a  humble  heart, 
Self-questioned  where  it  did  not  understand, 
And  with  a  superstitious  eye  of  love. 

And  that  is  the  more  remarkable,  this  minute  care  with 
which  Shakespeare  studied  natural  phenomena,  when 
we  remember  that  his  work  as  a  poet  was  in  no  way 
immediately  concerned  with  them  ;  at  most  they  could 
but  furnish  him  with  ornament,  with  what  was 
essentially  subordinate  and  collateral  in  his  themes  and 
in  his  aims.  And  now  for  a  few  illustrations  which  it 
will  be  seen  not  only  indicate  the  keen  interest  with 
which  they  must  have  been  regarded,  as  proved  by  the 
impression  made  on  memory,  but  the  close  scrutiny  to 
which  most  of  them  must  have  been  submitted  : 

Cinque-spotted,  like  the  crimson  drops 
1'  the  bottom  of  a  cowslip. 

Cymbeline,  n.  ii. 

"  .Furr'd  moss"  (Cymbeline,  iv.  ii.),  " Slue-veined  violets " 
(Venus  and  Adonis,  125),  "Cuckoo  buds  of  yellow  hue" 
(Loves  Labours  Lost,  v.  ii.),  "the  ripest  mulberry  that 
will  not  hold  the  handling"  (Coriolanus,  in.  ii.),  the 
"willow  that  shows  his  hoar  leaves  in  the  glassy 
stream"  (Hamlet,  iv.  vii.),  "the  ousel- cock  .  .  . 
with  orange-tawny  bill"  (Midsummer  Night's  Dream, 
in.  i.),  "the  russet-pated  chough"  (Midsummer  Nights 


SHAKESPEARE'S   BIRTHPLACE 

Behind  Shakespeare's  birthplace  at  Stratford-on-Avon 
lies  the  garden  in  which  some  fifty  or  sixty  years  ago  were 
planted  the  trees,  flowers,  and  shrubs  mentioned  in  his 
plays.  They  have  now  grown  into  quite  a  picturesque  old 
English  garden. 


SHAKESPEARE  3 

Dream,  in.  ii.),  "the  shard-borne  beetle"  (Macbeth, 
in.  ii.),  "sharded"  (Cymbeline,  HI.  iii.),  the  "red-hippd 
humble  bee"  (Midsummer  Nights  Dream,  iv.  i.),  "the 
gilded  newt"  (Timon  of  Athens,  iv.  iii.),  "for  men,  like 
butterflies,  show  not  their  mealy  wings"  (Troilus  and 
Cressida,  in.  iii.),  "  heavy -gaited  toads"  (Richard  II., 
in.  ii.),  "the  staring  owl"  (Loves  Labours  Lost,  v.  ii.). 
There  is  the  same  minute  observation  in  the  description 
of  the  snail  shrinking  into  its  shell : — 

Or  as  the  snail,  whose  tender  horns  being  hit, 
Shrinks  backwards  in  his  shelly  cave  with  pain, 
And  there,  all  smother'd  up,  in  shade  doth  sit, 
Long  after  fearing  to  creep  forth  again. 

Venus  and  Adonis,  1033  seqq. 

So,  too,  this  of  the  violet  when  faded  : — 

The  violet  past  prime, 
And  sable  curls  all  silver'd  o'er  with  white. 

Sonnet  xn. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  multiply  these  illustrations. 

It  is  in  the  earlier  years  of  life  that  all  men  are 
most  susceptible  of  impressions  from  external  nature 
which,  becoming  consecrated  by  memory  and  associa- 
tion, grow  more  vivid  and  influential  as  youth  recedes. 
It  was  so  with  Sophocles  and  Theocritus,  with  Dante 
and  Chaucer,  with  Wordsworth  and  Scott,  with  Crabbe 
and  with  Tennyson.  And  most  assuredly  it  was 
so  with  Shakespeare.  It  was,  however,  his  lot  never 
wholly  to  be  separated  from  his  early  surroundings, 
for  it  is  probable  that  he  visited  Stratford  occasionally 


4  POETS'  COUNTRY 

during  the  whole  course  of  his  life,  and  his  closing 
years  were  certainly  passed  there.  In  considering  him 
as  a  nature-painter  it  is  not  often,  of  course,  possible  to 
define  and  identify  his  pictures  with  particular  localities, 
because  he  paints  nature  as  he  paints  men,  typically 
and  in  essence.  But  as  he  never  depicted  what  he 
never  saw — the  individuals  through  a  study  of  whom 
he  penetrated  to  universal  humanity  were  the  men  and 
women  who  surrounded  him — so  in  his  pictures  of 
natural  scenery,  however  generic  might  be  his  treat- 
ment of  it,  he  rarely  strayed — indeed,  it  was  not 
necessary  for  him  to  stray — out  of  the  sphere  of  what 
had  long  been  familiar  to  him  at  home.  If  we  except 
his  pictures  of  the  sea,  they  are  not  numerous ;  his 
pictures  of  mountains,  they  are  meagre  and  still  rarer ; 
of  Dover  Cliff,  it  stands  alone ;  all  his  nature-paintings 
resolve  themselves  into  representations  more  or  less 
typical  of  what  could  be  seen  in  or  about  Stratford  or 
within  a  radius  of  twenty  miles  of  it.  Illimitable  as 
his  genius  was,  its  activity  and  range  were  always 
bounded,  and  bounded  deliberately,  by  experience. 
Had  he  seen  the  Tropics  or  the  Arctic  regions,  or  had 
he  crossed  the  Alps,  can  we  doubt  that  we  should  have 
had  pictures  rivalling  those  of  the  storm  in  Lear,  the 
sea-scenes  in  Othello  and  Pericles,  and  the  idylls  in  the 
Midsummer  Nights  Dream,  the  Winters  Tale,  and 
Cymbeline ;  or  had  he  visited  France  or  Italy  or  Spain, 
could  we  doubt  that  he  would  have  been  to  Nature 
there  what  he  was  to  Nature  here  ? 


SHAKESPEARE  5 

Ruskin,  commenting  on  the  local  influences  affecting 
Shakespeare's  nature-painting,  makes  some  remarks 
which  are  worth  transcribing  : — 

There  was  only  one  thing  belonging  to  hills  that  Shakespeare 
seemed  to  feel  as  noble — the  pine-tree — and  that  was  because  he 
had  seen  it  in  Warwickshire,  clumps  of  pine  occasionally  rising  on 
little  sandstone  mounds,  as  at  the  place  of  execution  of  Piers 
Gaveston,  above  the  lowland  woods.  He  touches  on  this  tree 
fondly  again  and  again : 

As  rough, 

Their  royal  blood  enchafed,  as  the  rud'st  wind 
That  by  his  top  doth  take  the  mountain  pine, 
And  make  him  stoop  to  the  vale.1 

The  strong-based  promontory 
Have  I  made  shake,  and  by  the  spurs  pluck'd  up 
The  pine  and  cedar.2 

Where  note  his  observance  of  the  peculiar  horizontal  roots  of  the 
pine,  spurred  as  it  is  by  them  like  the  claw  of  a  bird,  and  partly 
propped,  as  the  aiguilles  by  those  rock  promontories  at  their  bases 
which  I  have  always  called  their  spurs ;  this  observance  of  the 
pine's  strength  and  animal-like  grasp  being  the  chief  reason  for  his 
choosing  it,  above  other  trees,  for  Ariel's  prison.  Again : 

You  may  as  well  forbid  the  mountain  pines 
To  wag  their  high  tops,  and  to  make  no  noise 
When  they  are  fretted  with  the  gusts  of  heaven.3 

And  yet  again : 

But  when  from  under  this  terrestrial  ball 
He  fires  the  proud  tops  of  the  Eastern  pines.4 

We  may  judge,  by  the  impression  which  this  single  feature  of  hill 
scenery  seems  to  have  made  on  Shakespeare's  mind,  because  he  had 

1  Cymbeline,  iv.  ii.  2  Tempest,  v.  i. 

8  Merchant  of  Venice,  iv.  i.  4  Richard  II.,  in.  ii. 


6  POETS'  COUNTRY 

seen  it  in  his  youth,  how  his  whole  temper  would  have  been 
changed  if  he  had  lived  in  a  more  sublime  country,  and  how 
essential  it  was  to  his  power  of  contemplation  of  mankind  that 
he  should  be  removed  from  the  sterner  influences  of  Nature 
(Modern  Painters,  vol.  iv.  Part  v.  chapter  xx.). 

Now  let  us  take  the  characteristic  Stratford  scenery 
— the  Avon  and  the  meadows  on  its  banks — and  see 
how  they  are  recalled  in  his  work.  The  lines  in  the 
Midsummer  Nights  Dream  : — 

The  nine  men's  morris  is  fill'd  up  with  mud, 
And  the  quaint  mazes  on  the  wanton  green 
For  lack  of  tread  are  undistinguishable, 

n.  i. 

simply  photograph  what  may  now  be  seen  every  spring, 
when  the  weather  has  been  rainy,  in  the  meadows  by 
the  theatre,  the  old  game  of  Nine  Men's  Morris  being 
still  not  obsolete.  Strutt,  in  his  Sports  and  Pastimes 
(Second  Edition,  p.  279),  thus  describes  it : — 

In  that  part  of  Warwickshire  where  Shakespeare  was  born,  and 
the  neighbouring  parts  of  Northamptonshire,  the  shepherds  and 
other  boys  dig  up  the  turf  with  their  knives  to  represent  a  sort  of 
imperfect  chessboard.  It  consists  of  a  square,  sometimes  only  a 
foot  in  diameter,  sometimes  three  and  four  yards,  Within  this  is 
another  square,  every  side  of  which  is  parallel  to  the  external 
square.  .  .  .  These  figures  are  always  cut  upon  the  green  turf  or 
leys,  as  they  are  called,  or  upon  the  grass  at  the  end  of  ploughed 
lands,  and  in  rainy  seasons  never  fail  to  be  choken  with  mud. 

The  quaint  mazes  are,  of  course,  the  faery  rings  so 
conspicuous  in  these  meadows. 

In  Titus  Andronicus,  in.  i.,  we  find  what  is  one  of 


SHAKESPEARE  7 

the  most  prominent   features   of   that   scenery   every 

spring : — 

Meadows  yet  not  dry, 
With  miry  slime  left  on  them  by  a  flood ; 

and  in  rich  abundance  every  spring, 

.     .     .      daisies  pied  and  violets  blue, 

And  lady-smocks  all  silver  white, 
And  cuckoo  buds  of  yellow  hue 

Do  paint  the  meadows  with  delight, 

Love's  Labour  s  Lost,  v.  ii. 

when 

Proud-pied  April,  dress'd  in  all  his  trim, 
Hath  put  a  spirit  of  youth  in  everything. 

Sonnet  xcvm. 

To  these  scenes  he  was  turning  when  he  spoke  of 
Lucrece's  hand  as  the  "  perfect  white  "  which 

Show'd  like  an  April  daisy  on  the  grass, 
With  pearly  sweat,  resembling  dew  of  night ; 

and  her  eyes, 

Like  marigolds  had  sheathed  their  light, 

the  daisy  and  marigold  being  most  conspicuous  in  those 
richly  fertile  meadows.  And  what  is  the  following  but 
an  April  photograph  of  the  river-side  from  Chalcote  to 
the  bathing-place  ? 

Thy  banks  with  peonied  and  twilled  brims, 
Which  spongy  April  at  thy  hest  betrims 
To  make  cold  nymphs  chaste  crowns ; 

Tempest,  iv.  i. 

"  peonied  and  twilled  brims  "  being  river-banks  covered 


8  POETS'  COUNTRY 

with  marigolds  and  reeds.  How  often  may  he  have 
seen  on  the  Avon  what  he  describes  here — 

A  dive-dapper  peering  through  a  wave, 
Who,  being  look'd  on,  ducks  as  quickly  in. 

Venus  and  Adonis,  86-87. 

And  here — 

A  vagabond  flag l  upon  the  stream 

Goes  to  and  back,  lackeying  the  varying  tide, 

To  rot  itself  with  motion. 

Antony  and  Cleopatra,  i.  iv. 

Nor  have  we  to  go  far  to  find  many  a  spot  which 
might  have  been  the  original  of 

There  is  a  willow  grows  aslant  a  brook, 

That  shows  his  hoar  leaves  in  the  glassy  stream ; 

Hamlet,  iv.  vii. 

or  the  banks  where  poor  Ophelia  could  gather  her 
"  fantastic  garland  "  of 

Crow-flowers,  nettles,  daisies,  and  long  purples 
That  liberal  shepherds  give  a  grosser  name. 

And  how  often  might  he  have  seen  what  Lysander 
looked  to  see — 

To-morrow  night,  when  Phoebe  doth  behold 
Her  silver  visage  in  the  wat'ry  glass, 
Decking  with  liquid  pearl  the  bladed  grass. 

Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  i.  i. 

Either  the  Avon  itself,  or  perhaps  one  of  the  many 
brooks  in  the  forest  of  Arden,  possibly  the  brook  that 
runs  by  Langley,  near  Clevedon,  or  the  brook  at 

1  i.e.  bulrush. 


THE  GRAMMAR  SCHOOL,  STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

The  Grammar  School,  Stratford-on-Avon,  founded  1482, 
and  in  which  Shakespeare  was  educated  from  1572  to  1577, 
is  still  in  use  as  a  school.  The  picture  here  given  is  one  of 
the  class  rooms,  formerly  the  Council  Chamber  of  the  town. 
In  some  of  the  others  it  is  said  Shakespeare  first  saw  a  play, 
its  impression  probably  influencing  his  career. 


SHAKESPEARE  9 

Shottery,  or,  more  likely  perhaps,  the  brook  at 
Wellesbourne,  gave  him,  doubtless,  this  charming 
picture — 

The  current  that  with  gentle  murmur  glides 

Thou  know'st,  being  stopp'd,  impatiently  doth  rage ; 

But  when  his  fair  course  is  not  hindered, 

He  makes  sweet  music  with  th'  enamell'd  stones, 

Giving  a  gentle  kiss  to  every  sedge 

He  overtaketh  in  his  pilgrimage  : 

And  so  by  many  winding  nooks  he  strays 

With  willing  sport  to  the  wild  ocean. 

Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  n.  vii. 

The  characteristic  scenery  of  the  neighbouring  forest 
of  Arden,  with  its  brooks  and  lawns  and  glades,  appears 
and  reappears  in  his  dramas.  Here  was  the 

Oak  whose  antique  root  peeps  out 
Upon  the  brook  that  brawls  along  this  wood  ; 

As  You  Like  It,  n.  i. 

the  oak 

Whose  boughs  were  moss'd  with  age, 
And  high  top  bald  with  dry  antiquity ; 

Idem,  iv.  iii. 

the 

Shade  of  melancholy  boughs  ; 

Idem,  ii.  vii. 

the 

Shadowy,  desert,  unfrequented  woods, 

in  which  Valentine  sought  solace  (Two  Gentlemen  of 
F'erona,  v.  iv.).  Here  in  one  of  the  many  glades 
intersecting  it  he  might  have  seen  the 

Poor  sequester'd  stag, 

That  from  the  hunter's  aim  had  ta'en  a  hurt, 
Did  come  to  languish 


10  POETS'  COUNTRY 

And  thus  the  hairy  fool, 
Much  marked  of  the  melancholy  Jaques, 
Stood  on  the  extremest  verge  of  the  swift  brook, 
Augmenting  it  with  tears. 

Here  might  he  often,  in  the  hunting  season,  have 
witnessed  and  heard  what  he  so  vividly  describes  in  the 
first  scene  of  the  fourth  act  of  the  Midsummer  Night's 
Dream : — 

Never  did  I  hear 

Such  gallant  chiding,  for,  besides  the  groves, 
The  skies,  the  fountains,  every  region  near 
Seem'd  all  one  mutual  cry :  I  never  heard 
So  musical  a  discord,  such  sweet  thunder ; 

and  what  he  depicts  in  the  hunting  scene  in  Titus 
Andronicus,  n.  i.  We  seem  to  trace  this  same  scenery 
not  only  in  As  You  Like  It,  but  in  the  Midsummer 
Nights  Dream  and  in  Timon  of  Athens,  but  we  see  it 
only  in  glimpses.  Shakespeare  has  nowhere  given  any 
detailed  description  of  a  forest  or  even  of  trees.  It  is 
on  flowers  that  he  dwells,  and  here  his  fancy  absolutely 
revels.  Who  can  forget 

O  Proserpina, 

For  the  flowers  now,  that  frighted  thou  let'st  fall 
From  Dis's  waggon !     Daffodils 
That  come  before  the  swallow  dares,  and  take 
The  winds  of  March  with  beauty ;  violets,  dim, 
But  sweeter  than  the  lids  of  Juno's  eyes 
Or  Cytherea's  breath  ;  pale  primroses 
That  die  unmarried,  ere  they  can  behold 
Bright  Phoebus  in  his  strength — a  malady 
Most  incident  to  maids ;  bold  oxlips  and 
The  crown  imperial ;  lilies  of  all  kinds, 
The  flower-de-luce  being  one  ; 


SHAKESPEARE  11 

and  indeed  the  whole  of  the  scene  in  which  this  lovely 
passage  occurs  (Winters  Tale,  iv.  iii.)  and  the  not  less 
magical  passage  in  Cymbeline  (iv.  ii.)  : — 

With  fairest  flowers, 

Whilst  Summer  lasts  and  I  live  here,  Fidele, 
I'll  sweeten  thy  sad  grave  :  thou  shalt  not  lack 
The  flower  that's  like  thy  face,  pale  primrose,  nor 
The  azur'd  harebell,  like  they  veins,  no,  nor 
The  leaf  of  eglantine,  whom  not  to  slander 
Outsweetens  not  thy  breath :  the  ruddock  would 
With  charitable  bill, — O  bill !  sore  shaming 
Those  rich-left  heirs  that  let  their  fathers  lie 
Without  a  monument ! — bring  thee  all  this, 
Yea,  and  furr'd  moss  besides,  when  flowers  are  none, 
To  winter-ground  thy  corse. 

So,  too,  Marina  in  Pericles  (iv.  i.) : — 

No,  1  will  rob  Tellus  of  her  weed 
To  strew  thy  green  with  flowers ;  the  yellows,  blues, 
The  purple  violets  and  marigolds, 
Shall  as  a  carpet  hang  upon  thy  grave, 
While  summer  days  do  last. 

How  magical  is  the  single  line, 

The  cowslips  tall  her  pensioners  be  ; 
In  their  gold  coats  spots  you  see. 

Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  ir.  i. 

He  seems  to  penetrate  into  the  very  life  and  soul  of 
these,  Nature's  loveliest  creations. 

From  her  fair  and  unpolluted  flesh 
May  violets  spring, 

is  the  blessing  on  Ophelia. 

There's  rosemary,  that's  for  remembrance ;  and  there's  pansies, 


12  POETS'  COUNTRY 

that's  for  thoughts.  .  .  .  There's  fennel  for  you,  and  columbines ; 
there's  rue  for  you.  ...  I  would  give  you  some  violets,  but  they 
withered  all  when  my  father  died, 

are  poor  Ophelia's  bequests,  just  as  Perdita  afterwards, 
in  the  Winter's  Tale,  distributes  her  presents,  suiting 
them  to  the  various  seasons  of  life.  Illustrations 
from  them  are  always  springing  to  his  pen.  Would 
Belarius  describe  the  boys  Guiderius  and  Arviragus 
(CymbeUne,  iv.  ii.), 

They  are  as  gentle 
As  zephyrs  blowing  below  the  violet, 
Not  wagging  his  sweet  head, 

or  Montague  the  passion  consuming  Romeo,  its  victim  is 

As  is  the  bud  bit  with  an  envious  worm, 
Ere  he  can  spread  his  sweet  leaves  to  the  air, 
Or  dedicate  his  beauty  to  the  sun ; 

while  Juliet  prays  that 

This  bud  of  love  by  Summer's  ripening  breath 
May  prove  a  beauteous  flower  when  next  we  meet. 

So  Laertes  warns  Ophelia  that 

The  canker  galls  the  infants  of  the  Spring 
Too  oft  before  their  buttons  be  disclosed. 

Indeed  his  dramas  abound  in  such  natural  images  as 
surrounded  him  on  all  sides  in  his  beautiful  rural  home. 
A  walk  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Wire  Brake  Brank 
would  probably  now  give  us  the  original  of 

So  doth  the  woodbine  the  sweet  honeysuckle 
Gently  entwist :  the  female  ivy  so 
Enrings  the  barky  fingers  of  the  elm. 

Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  iv.  i. 


SHAKESPEARE  13 

The  elm,  to  which  Shakespeare  so  often  refers,  is,  it 
may  be  noted,  a  very  prominent  feature  in  and  around 
Stratford.  At  times  we  feel  as  if  we  could  actually 
localise  his  pictures.  For  example,  the  beautiful  passage 
in  the  Midsummer  Night's  Dream, 

I  know  a  bank  whereon  the  wild  thyme  blows, 
Where  oxlips  and  the  nodding  violet  grows, 

ILL 

might  quite  well  have  been  the  Scarbank  above 
Hampton  Lucy,  or  the  bank  on  the  Evesham  road 
above  Shottery,  just  as 

The  pleached  bower 
Where  honeysuckles  ripen' d  by  the  sun 
Forbid  the  sun  to  enter, 

Much  Ado  about  Nothing,  in.  i. 

may  still  be  seen  at  Clifford  Chambers.  A  ramble  any 
late  autumn  day  about  the  lanes  near  Stratford  would 
bring  before  us  what  is  so  magically  depicted  in  the 
seventy -third  Sonnet : — 

That  time  of  year  thou  mayst  in  me  behold 
When  yellow  leaves,  or  none,  or  few,  do  hang 
Upon  those  boughs  which  shake  against  the  cold, 
Bare  ruin'd  choirs,  where  late  the  sweet  birds  sang ; 

or  at  another  season  recall 

The  birds  chant  melody  on  every  bush ; 

The  green  leaves  quiver  with  the  cooling  wind, 

And  make  a  chequer'd  shadow  on  the  ground. 

And  whilst  the  babbling  echo  mocks  the  hounds, 
Replying  shrilly  to  the  well-tun'd  horns, 
Let  us  sit  down. 

Titus  Andronicus,  11.  ii. 


14  POETS'  COUNTRY 

On  Shakespeare's  reference  to  birds,  whose  songs 
seem  to  have  had  the  same  charm  for  his  ear  that 
flowers  had  for  his  eye,  it  is  not  necessary  to  dwell,  but 
of  his  accuracy  with  respect  to  them  we  have  a  striking 
illustration  in  his  noting  that  the  nightingale's  song 
ceases  early  in  summer  : — 

As  Philomel  in  summer's  front  doth  sing, 
And  stops  her  pipe  in  growth  of  riper  days ; 

Sonnet  en. 

so  different  from  Milton,  who  makes  it  "  trill  her  thick- 
warbled  notes  the  summer  long." 1 

Of  natural  phenomena  nothing  seems  to  have  had 
so  much  attraction  for  Shakespeare  as  dawn  and  the 
early  morning,  of  which,  it  may  be  noted,  he  could 
have  had  an  excellent  view  from  the  upper  windows  of 
his  father's  house  in  Henley  Street.  His  descriptions, 
indeed,  are  always  masterpieces.  Take  the  following : — 

Lo  !  here  the  gentle  lark,  weary  of  rest, 
From  his  moist  cabinet  mounts  up  on  high, 
And  wakes  the  morning,  from  whose  silver  breast 
The  sun  ariseth  in  his  majesty, 

Who  doth  the  world  so  gloriously  behold 
That  cedar-tops  and  hills  seem  burnish'd  gold. 

Venus  and  Adonis,  853-858. 

Put  this  beside — 

Hark  !  hark  !  the  lark  at  heaven's  gate  sings, 

And  Phrebus  'gins  arise, 
His  steeds  to  water  at  those  springs 

On  chalic'd  flowers  that  lies ; 
And  winking  Mary-buds  begin 

To  ope  their  golden  eyes  : 

1  Paradise  Regained,  IV.  248. 


ANN   HATHAWAY'S   COTTAGE 


Showing  the   road   leading   to  Stratford-on-Avon  often 
travelled  by  Shakespeare. 


. 


SHAKESPEARE  15 

With  everything  that  pretty  is, 
My  lady  sweet,  arise : 
Arise,  arise. 

Cymbeline,  n.  iii. 

In   the  twenty -ninth   Sonnet  we  find    this   beautiful 
application  of  it : — 

Haply  I  think  on  thee, — and  then  my  state, 

Like  to  the  lark  at  break  of  day  arising 

From  sullen  earth,  sings  hymns  at  heaven's  gate. 

He  paints  it  indeed  in  all  its  phases  : — 

Look,  love,  what  envious  streaks 
Do  lace  the  severing  clouds  in  yonder  east. 
Night's  candles  are  burnt  out,  and  jocund  day 
Stands  tiptoe  on  the  misty  mountain  tops. 

Romeo  and  Juliet,  HI.  v. 

Again,  with  more  detail,  in  the  same  play  : — 

The  grey-ey'd  morn  smiles  on  the  frowning  night, 
Chequering  the  eastern  clouds  with  streaks  of  light, 
And  flecked  darkness  like  a  drunkard  reels 
From  forth  day's  path,  and  Titan's  fiery  wheels. 

Idem,  ii.  ii. 

So  in  Hamlet)  i.  i.  : — 

But  look,  the  morn,  in  russet  mantle  clad, 
Walks  o'er  the  dew  of  yon  high  eastern  hill. 

The  ghost  adds  another  touch  : — 

The  glow-worm  shows  the  matin  to  be  near, 
And  'gins  to  pale  his  ineffectual  fire. 

So  in  the  seventh  Sonnet : — 

Lo  !  in  the  orient  when  the  gracious  light 
Lifts  up  his  burning  head,  etc. 


16  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Now  we  have  it  reflected  in  water  : — 

Even  till  the  eastern  gate,  all  fiery-red, 
Opening  on  Neptune  with  fair  blessed  beams, 
Turns  into  yellow  gold  his  salt  green  streams. 

Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  in.  ii. 

So  too  in  Sonnet  thirty-three  : — 

Full  many  a  glorious  morning  have  I  seen 
Flatter  the  mountain  tops  with  sovereign  eye, 
Kissing  with  golden  face  the  meadows  green, 
Gilding  pale  streams  with  heavenly  alchemy. 

Now  in  its  effect  on  the  dew  :  — 

As  is  the  morning's  silver-melting  dew 
Against  the  golden  splendour  of  the  sun. 

Lucrece,  24-25. 

Now  on  trees,  how  it 

Fires  the  proud  tops  of  the  eastern  pines. 

Richard  II. ,  in.  ii. 

How  vivid  is  his  picture  of  it  breaking  threateningly 
for  storm  in  1  Henry  IV.,  v.  i. : — 

K.  HENRY.     How  bloodily  the  sun  begins  to  peer 

Above  yon  bosky  hill !  the  day  looks  pale 
At  his  distemperature. 

PRINCE.  The  Southern  wind 

Doth  play  the  trumpet  to  his  purposes, 
And  by  his  hollow  whistling  in  the  leaves 
Foretells  a  tempest  and  a  blustering  day. 

Of  sunset  he  has  given,  I  think,  only  one  detailed 
description  ;  it  is  in  King  John,  v.  iv.  : — 

This  night,  whose  black  contagious  breath 
Already  smokes  above  the  burning  crest 
Of  the  old,  feeble,  and  day-wearied  sun. 


SHAKESPEARE  17 

Of  the  approach  of  night  we  have  that  magical 
picture  in  eleven  words  : 

Light  thickens,  and  the  crow 
Makes  wing  to  the  rooky  wood. 

Macbeth,  HI.  ii. 

Cloudland  he  had  also  watched  with  interest. 
Where  was  it  ever  depicted  more  graphically  than  in 
Antony  and  Cleopatra  (iv.  xiv.)  ? 

ANT.     Sometime  we  see  a  cloud  that's  dragonish ; 

A  vapour  sometime  like  a  bear  or  lion, 

A  tower' d  citadel,  a  pendent  rock, 

A  forked  mountain  or  blue  promontory, 

With  trees  upon't,  that  nod  unto  the  world, 

And  mock  our  eyes  with  air :  thou  hast  seen  these  signs ; 

They  are  black  Vesper's  pageants. 

EROS.  Ay,  my  lord. 

ANT.     That  which  is  now  a  horse,  even  with  a  thought 

The  rack  dislimns,  and  makes  it  indistinct 

As  water  is  in  water. 

Fancy  is  no  doubt  mainly  responsible  for 

As  is  a  winged  messenger  of  heaven 
Unto  the  white  upturned  wond'ring  eyes 
Of  mortals  that  fall  back  to  gaze  on  him, 
When  he  bestrides  the  lazy-pacing  clouds 
And  sails  upon  the  bosom  of  the  air. 

Romeo  and  Juliet,  11.  ii. 

How  the  starry  heavens  affected  him  is  shown 
by  the  passage,  which  it  is  scarcely  necessary  to 

quote : — 

How  sweet  the  moonlight  sleeps  upon  this  bank  J 

Sit,  Jessica  :  look  how  the  floor  of  heaven 
Is  thick  inlaid  with  patins  of  bright  gold. 


18  POETS'  COUNTRY 

There's  not  the  smallest  orb  which  them  behold'st 
But  in  his  motion  like  an  angel  sings, 
Still  quiring  to  the  young-ey'd  cherubins. 

Merchant  of  Venice,  v.  i. 

Nor  must  we  forget  his  magical  tribute  to  the  "  queen 
o'  the  sky  "  :— 

Hail,  many-colour'd  messenger,  that  ne'er 
Dost  disobey  the  wife  of  Jupiter ; 
Who  with  thy  saffron  wings  upon  my  flowers 
Diffusest  honey-drops,  refreshing  showers, 
And  with  each  end  of  thy  blue  bow  dost  crown 
My  bosky  acres,  and  my  unshrubb'd  down, 
Rich  scarf  to  my  proud  earth. 

Tempest,  iv.  i. 

The  last  three  verses  very  exactly  apply  to  what  he 
might  often  have  witnessed  in  his  native  place. 

It  is  not  possible  to  localise  the  picture  of  Macbeth's 
castle,  but  generically  there  were  many  country  seats 
within  his  ken  in  his  Stratford  days  which  might  have 
suggested  it : — 

DUNCAN.     This  castle  hath  a  pleasant  seat :  the  air 
Nimbly  and  sweetly  recommends  itself 
Unto  our  gentle  senses. 

BANQUO.  This  guest  of  summer, 

The  temple-haunting  martlet,  does  approve 
By  his  lov'd  mansionry  that  the  heaven's  breath 
Smells  wooingly  here  :  no  jutty,  frieze, 
Buttress  nor  coign  of  vantage,  but  this  bird 
Hath  made  his  pendent  bed  and  procreant  cradle : 
Where  they  most  breed  and  haunt  I  have  observ'd 
The  air  is  delicate. 

Macbeth,  i.  vi. 

But  if  his  pencil  labours  most  in  painting  Nature  in 
her  calm  and  beauty,  he  has  also  painted  her,  with 


SHAKESPEARE  19 

equal  vividness,  in  her  wrath.     Take  the  picture  of  the 
storm  in  Lear  : — 

Alack !  the  night  comes  on,  and  the  bleak  winds 
Do  sorely  ruffle ;  .  .  . 

The  to-and-fro  conflicting  wind  and  rain. 

Things  that  love  night 

Love  not  such  nights  as  these  :  the  wrathful  skies 
Gallow  the  very  wanderers  of  the  dark, 
And  make  them  keep  their  caves.     Since  I  was  man 
Such  sheets  of  fire,  such  bursts  of  horrid  thunder, 
Such  groans  of  roaring  wind  and  rain,  I  never 
Remember  to  have  heard :  man's  nature  cannot  carry 

The  affliction  nor  the  fear. 

Lear,  11.  iv.,  in.  i.  and  ii. 

So,  too,  though  not  in  such  graphic  detail,  the  night 
described  by  Lennox  in  Macbeth  (n.  ii.).  Lightning  he 
always  describes  with  singular  vividness ;  so  in  Lear 
(in.  ii.)  :— 

You  sulphurous  and  thought-executing  fires, 
Vaunt-couriers  to  oak-cleaving  thunderbolts. 

And  iv.  vii.  : — 

Was  this  a  face 

To  be  exposed  to  the  warring  winds, 
To  stand  against  the  deep  dread-bolted  thunder, 
In  the  most  terrible  and  nimble  stroke 
Of  quick  cross  lightning  ? 

So  in  Pericles,  in.  i.,  we  have  the  "  nimble  sulphurous 
flashes."     And  in  Julius  Ccesar,  i.  iii.  : — 

And  when  the  cross  blue  lightning  seem'd  to  open 
The  breast  of  heaven. 

How  admirably  is  sheet  lightning  described  in  Mid- 
summer Night's  Dream,  i.  i.  : — 


20  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Brief  as  the  lightning  in  the  collied  night, 
That,  in  a  spleen,  unfolds  both  heaven  and  earth, 
And  ere  a  man  hath  power  to  say,  "  Behold  !  " 
The  jaws  of  darkness  do  devour  it  up. 

And  now  let  us  turn  to  what  he  could  not  possibly 
have  witnessed  in  the  scenes  amid  which  his  youth  was 
passed,  and  which  have  furnished  him  with  so  much 
of  the  material  of  his  poetry.  Such  would  be  his 
superb  description  of  Dover  Cliff  in  Lear,  iv.  vi.  : — 

Come  on,  sir,  here's  the  place ;  stand  still.     How  fearful 

And  dizzy  'tis  to  cast  one's  eyes  so  low ! 

The  crows  and  choughs  that  wing  the  midway  air 

Show  scarce  so  gross  as  beetles :  half-way  down 

Hangs  one  that  gathers  samphire,  dreadful  trade ! 

Methinks  he  seems  no  bigger  than  his  head. 

The  fishermen  that  walk  upon  the  beach 

Appear  like  mice,  and  yon  tall  anchoring  bark 

Diminish'd  to  her  cock,  her  cock  a  buoy 

Almost  too  small  for  sight.     The  murmuring  surge 

That  on  the  unnumber'd  idle  pebbles  chafes 

Cannot  be  heard  so  high.     I'll  look  no  more, 

Lest  my  brain  turn  and  the  deficient  sight 

Topple  down  headlong. 

There  is  one  very  vivid  picture  in  the  Rape  of 
Lucrece  which  may  have  been  suggested  to  him  by 
what  he  saw  on  the  Thames  at  London  Bridge ;  the 
water  there,  in  his  day  and  long  afterwards,  rushed 
like  a  cataract  through  the  narrow  middle  arches  : — 

As  through  an  arch  the  violent  roaring  tide 
Outruns  the  eye  that  doth  behold  his  haste ; 


THE  AVON   AT  STRATFORD 

The   Avon   at    "Str  ate -ford"    winds   through    meadow 
fields. 

The  current  that  with  gentle  murmur  glides, 

Thou  know'st,  being  stopp'd,  impatiently  doth  rage  ; 

But  when  his  fair  course  is  not  hindered, 

He  makes  sweet  music  with  th'  enamell'd  stones, 

Giving  a  gentle  kiss  to  every  sedge 

He  overtaketh  in  his  pilgrimage  : 

And  so  by  many  winding  nooks  he  strays 

With  willing  sport  to  the  wild  ocean. 

Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona. 


SHAKESPEARE  21 

Yet  in  the  eddy  boundeth  in  his  pride 
Back  to  the  strait  that  forc'd  him  on  so  fast ; 
In  rage  sent  out,  recall'd  in  rage,  being  past. 

Lucrece,  1667-1 671. 

His  indifference  to  mountain  scenery,  on  which  he 
never  dwells,  to  which,  indeed,  he  scarcely  ever  refers, 
Ruskin  attributes  to  the  fact  that  he  never  saw  moun- 
tains in  early  life,  as  they  were  no  feature  in  the  scenery 
about  his  home.  If  I  am  not  mistaken,  there  is  only 
one  vivid  touch  of  mountain  picturing  in  all  his  works. 
It  is  in  the  Midsummer  Night's  Dream  (iv.  i.) : — 

These  things  seem  small  and  undistinguishable, 
Like  far-off  mountains  turned  into  clouds. 

Certainly  we  have  in  Romeo  and  Juliet  "jocund  day  " 
standing  on  the  "  mountain's  misty  top."  The  only 
other  passage  in  which  he  dwells  on  them  could  hardly 
have  been  written  by  a  poet  for  whom  they  had 

attraction  : — 

As  doth  the  melted  snow 
Upon  the  valleys,  whose  low  vassal  seat 
The  Alps  doth  spit  and  void  his  rheum  upon. 

Henry  V.,  in.  v. 

But  this  certainly  does  not  apply  to  a  feature  of  Nature 
to  which  in  his  early  impressionable  days — supposing 
he  did  not  then  leave  Stratford — he  must  have  been 
equally  a  stranger— the  sea.  It  is  abundantly  clear  that 
Shakespeare  must  have  been  well  acquainted  with  the 
sea,  and  that  it  must  have  had  a  great  fascination  for 
him.  No  one  who  had  not  had  his  eye  on  his  object 
could  possibly  have  written, 


22  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Upon  the  beached  verge  of  the  salt  flood  ; 
Which  once  a  day  with  his  embossed  froth 
The  turbulent  surge  shall  cover. 

Timon  of  Athens,  v.  i. 

Or, 

As  fearfully  as  doth  a  galled  rock 
O'erhang  and  jutty  his  confounded  base, 
Swill'd  with  the  wild  and  wasteful  ocean. 

Henry  V.,  HI.  i. 

Or, 

Gazing  upon  a  late  embarked  friend, 

Till  the  wild  waves  will  have  him  seen  no  more, 

Whose  ridges  with  the  meeting  clouds  contend ; 

Venus  and  Adonis,  818-820. 

though  this  last  may  possibly  have  been  suggested  by 
Ovid. 

Take,  again,  the  following  from  Othello.,  n.  i.  : — 

MONTANO.     What  from  the  cape  can  you  discern  at  sea  ? 
1  ST  GENT.     Nothing  at  all :  it  is  a  high-wrought  flood  : 

I  cannot  'twixt  the  heaven  and  the  main 

Descry  a  sail. 
MON.  Methinks  the  wind  hath  spoke  aloud  at  land ; 

A  fuller  blast  ne'er  shook  our  battlements ; 

If  it  hath  ruffian'd  so  upon  the  sea, 

What  ribs  of  oak,  when  mountains  melt  on  them, 

Can  hold  the  mortise  ?  . 

SND  GENT.  .  .  .    .          . 

Do  but  stand  upon  the  foaming  shore, 

The  chidden  billow  seems  to  pelt  the  clouds ; 

The  wind-shak'd  surge  with  high  and  monstrous  mane 

Seems  to  cast  water  on  the  burning  bear, 

And  quench  the  guards  of  the  ever-fixed  pole. 

Still  more  vivid  is  the  picture  in  2  Henry  IV.,  in.  i. : — 

Wilt  thou  upon  the  high  and  giddy  mast 

Seal  up  the  ship-boy's  eyes,  and  rock  his  brains 


SHAKESPEARE  23 

In  cradle  of  the  rude  imperious  surge, 

And  in  the  visitation  of  the  winds, 

Who  take  the  ruffian  billows  by  the  top, 

Curling  their  monstrous  heads,  and  hanging  them 

With  deaf'ning  clamour  in  the  slippery  clouds, 

That  with  the  hurly  death  itself  awakes  ? 

See,  too,  the  first  scene  of  the  third  act  of  Pericles. 
The  triumphant  conflict  of  man's  handiwork  with  this 
terrible  adversary  evidently  appealed  to  his  sympathy, 
finding  expression  in  two  noble  passages  : — 

If  after  every  tempest  come  such  calms, 
May  the  winds  blow  till  they  awaken  death, 
And  let  the  labouring  bark  climb  hills  of  seas, 
Olympus-high,  and  duck  again  as  low 
As  hell 's  from  heaven. 

Othello,  ii.  L 

The  sea  being  smooth, 
How  many  shallow  bauble  boats  dare  sail 
Upon  her  patient  breast,  making  their  way 
With  those  of  nobler  bulk ! 
But  let  the  ruffian  Boreas  once  enrage 
The  gentle  Thetis,  and  anon  behold 
The  strong-ribb'd  bark  through  liquid  mountains  cut, 
Bounding  between  the  two  moist  elements 
Like  Perseus'  horse. 

Troilus  and  Cressida,  i.  iii. 

The  picture  in  the  Winter's  Tale,  m.  iii. — 

Now  the  ship  boring  the  moon  with  her  mainmast,  and  anon 
swallowed  with  yest  and  froth,  as  you'd  thrust  a  cork  into  a 
hogshead — 

could  never  have  been  painted  without  experience  ;  the 
very  epithet  yesty  (Macbeth,  iv.  i.) — "the  yesty  waves 
confound  and  swaUow  navigation  up" — oddly  enough 


24  POETS'  COUNTRY 

condemned  in  a  Greek  poet  by  Longinus  as  un- 
dignified— could  only  have  come  straight  from  observa- 
tion. We  have  the  same  accurate  sea-study  in  the  line 
in  Lear  (iv.  v.),  "whelk'd  and  wav'd  like  the  enridged 
sea,"  and  in  the  beautiful  line  in  Timon  (iv.  iii.) : 

Lie  where  the  light  foam  of  the  sea  may  beat 
Thy  grave-stone  daily. 

In  2  Henry  F7.,  in.  ii.,  we  have  a  curiously  accurate 
and  minute  touch  of  sea-shore  painting  : 

The  splitting  rocks  cower'd  in  the  sinking  sands. 

There  can,  indeed,  be  little  doubt  that,  landsman 
though  he  was,  the  sea  had  a  fascination  for  Shake- 
speare, and  he  must  have  known  it  and  its  surround- 
ings well.  His  description — we  must  allow  for  poetic 
exaggeration — of  Dover  Cliff  and  his  frequent  references 
in  various  forms  to  that 

Pale,  that  white-faced  shore, 
Whose  foot  spurns  back  the  ocean's  roaring  tides, 

might  seem  to  indicate  that  it  was  at  Dover  he  became 
familiar  with  this  feature  of  Nature. 

Natural  description  necessarily  holds  an  entirely 
subordinate  place  in  his  work,  and  it  is  among  the 
many  marvels  associated  with  this  prodigious  genius 
that  his  observation  should  have  been  as  sleepless  and 
as  accurate,  his  touch  as  masterly  and  as  unfaltering 
here  as  it  is  in  all  that  pertains  to  the  themes  which 
are  so  peculiarly  his  own. 


TRINITY   CHURCH,   STRATFORD-ON-AVON 

Trinity  Church,  Stratford-on-Avon,  in  which  Shakespeare 
is  buried,  may  be  called  Shakespeare's  shrine ;  viewed  from 
every  point  it  is  impressive,  perhaps  nowhere  more  so  than 
from  the  walk  by  the  river  between  the  bridge  and  the  mill 
where  this  sketch  was  taken. 


WILLIAM   WORDSWORTH 

1770-1850 

LFTER    he   was    turned   five-and-twenty   Wordsworth 
snted    or     occupied    five     homesteads.1      Each     one 
liffered  from  the  other  in  size  and  character,  but  they 
rere    all    of    them    country    houses,    interesting    and 
ittractive  in  themselves,  and  in  the  midst  of  beautiful 
3enery.     He  was  not  born  "  in  the  purple,"  nor,  on  the 
ther  hand,  in  the  "modest  russet  brown."     Coleridge 
rould  have  called  his  father's  house  at  Cockermouth  a 
lansion.      Seventeen  windows  (I  have  counted  them 
"from  side  to  side")  look  across  a  low-walled  garden 
trip  into  the  main  street.     Behind  the  house,  at  the 
foot  of  the  garden,  flows  the  Derwent,  close  beneath 
"  a  terrace  walk."     He  tells  us,  in  The  Prelude,  that 
"  the  bright  blue  river  "  sent  a  voice  "  that  flowed  along 
y  dreams,"  and  that  its  smooth  breast  reflected  the 

1  I  have  some  personal  knowledge  of  all  five.  Racedown  and  Dove 
Jottage  and  Rydal  Mount  I  have  visited  recently.  But  I  am  largely  in- 
lebted  to  the  following  works  for  most  of  the  information  contained  in  this 
essay,  viz.  :  Dove  Cottage,  by  Stopford  H.  Brooke,  1890 ;  Dove  Cottage,  by 
Professor  Knight,  1900  ;  Literary  Associations  of  the  English  Lakes,  by  the 
Rev.  H.  D.  Rawnsley,  2  vols. ,  1906 ;  The  Poetical  Works  of  W.  Wordsworth, 
edited  by  Professor  Knight,  8  vols.,  1896;  and  to  the  Oxford  edition  of 
Wordsworth's  Poems,  edited  by  T.  Hutchinson. 

25 


26  POETS'  COUNTRY 

towers  of  Cockermouth  Castle — "  a  shattered  monument 
of  feudal  sway."  Close  at  hand  was,  but  is  not,  a  small 
mill-race  which  flowed  through  sandy  fields — "  flowery 
groves  of  yellow  ragwort."  Away  to  the  west  loomed 
"Skiddaw's  lofty  height  —  bronzed  with  deepest 
radiance."  If  it  is  true  that  "a  five-year  child"  he 
used  to  "plunge  and  bask  alternate"  in  the  mill-race, 
from  morn  to  noon,  from  noon  to  eve  of  a  long 
summer's  day,  he  must  have  been  what  "  nurses  call  a 
limb  "  !  It  is  no  wonder  that  his  mother  was  anxious, 
and  wondered  whether  her  poetic  child  would  turn  out  a 
genius,  or  a  wastrel,  or  "  haply  "  both. 

Very  different,  but  even  more  inspiring,  were  his 
surroundings  at  Hawkshead,  where  he  attended  the  "  free 
grammar-school"  from  1778  to  1787.  His  "Dame's" 
cottage,  where  he  boarded,  was  not  a  "  cottage  of 
gentility."  "  It  is,"  says  Professor  Knight,  "  a  humble 
dwelling  of  two  storeys.  The  floor  of  the  basement 
flat,  paved  with  blue  flags  of  Coniston  slate,  is  probably 
just  as  it  was  in  Wordsworth's  time."  Wordsworth's 
bedroom,  which  faced  south-west,  is  on  the  left  of  the 
cottage.  Once  after  he  had  gone  to  Cambridge  he 
revisited  his  old  school,  half-proud,  half-ashamed  of 
his  "  gay  attire."  He  had  been  unmindful  of  the  past, 
but  the  past  returns  to  him  as  he  lies  in  his  "  accustomed 
bed":— 

That  lowly  bed  whence  I  had  heard  the  wind 
Roar  and  the  rain  beat  hard,  where  I  so  oft 
Had  lain  awake  on  summer  nights  to  watch 
The  moon  in  splendour  couched  among  the  leaves 


ALFOXDEN 

Alfoxden,  in  which  Wordsworth  lived,  1797-1798,  lies 
among  the  trees.  This  view  from  above  shows  the  island  of 
Steep  Holme,  the  Bristol  Channel,  and  Coast  of  Wales. 

This  burst  of  prospect,  here  the  shadowy  main, 
Dim-tinted,  there  the  mighty  majesty 
Of  that  huge  amphitheatre  of  rich 
And  elmy  fields. 

Fears  in  Solitude — COLERIDGE. 


WORDSWORTH  27 

Of  a  tall  ash,  that  near  our  cottage  stood  ; 

Had  watched  her  with  fixed  eyes,  while  to  and  fro 

In  the  dark  summit  of  the  waving  tree 

She  rocked  with  every  impulse  of  the  breeze. 

Prelude,  Book  IV.  11.  85-92. 

The  earlier  and  greater  books  of  The  Prelude  con- 
tain an  ample  and  illuminative  record  of  Wordsworth's 
school  days,  and  of  the  effect  of  his  "  way  of  life  "  and  of 
the  mountain  scenery  on  his  poetical  and  spiritual 
development.  Here  and  there  it  may  be  difficult  to 
repress  a  smile  at  the  solemn  paraphrases  in  which  he 
records  his  lapses  from  virtue  in  the  matter  of  "  springes 
to  catch  woodcocks "  :  other  men  had  laboured — had 
set  the  springes, — but  "  the  bird  .  .  .  became  my  prey." 
"Carnage,"  as  he  afterwards  maintained,  is  "God's 
daughter  "  ;  but  "  who  commanded  "  this  unsportsman- 
like behaviour  ? 

But  apart  from  these  "  variations,"  as  Byron  would 
have  called  them,  his  self -revelation  is,  as  Coleridge 
called  it,  "  an  orphic  song  indeed  "  : — 

A  song  divine  of  high  and  passionate  thoughts 
To  their  own  music  chaunted  ! 

Two  passages  may  be  quoted  which  contain  the 
conclusion  of  the  whole  matter.  They  recount  rather 
than  define  the  sources  of  "the  visionary  power"  as 
it  came  to  him  by  night,  and  dwelt  with  him  by  day  : — 

For  I  would  walk  alone, 
Under  the  quiet  stars,  and  at  that  time 
Have  felt  whate'er  there  is  of  power  in  sound 
To  breathe  an  elevated  mood,  by  form 


28  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Or  image  unprofaned ;  and  I  would  stand, 
If  the  night  blackened  with  a  coming  storm, 
Beneath  some  rock,  listening  to  notes  that  are 
The  ghostly  language  of  the  ancient  earth, 
Or  make  their  dim  abode  in  distant  winds. 

Prelude,  Book  II.  11.  302-310. 

Oft  before  the  hours  of  school 
I  travelled  round  our  little  lake,  five  miles 
Of  pleasant  wandering,        .  .  . 

Nor  seldom  did  I  lift  our  cottage  latch 
Far  earlier,  ere  one  smoke-wreath  had  risen 
From  human  dwelling,  or  the  vernal  thrush 
Was  audible ;  and  sate  among  the  woods 
Alone  upon  some  jutting  eminence, 
At  the  first  gleam  of  dawn-light,  when  the  Vale, 
Yet  slumbering,  lay  in  utter  solitude. 

Oft  in  these  moments  such  a  holy  calm 
Would  overspread  my  soul,  that  bodily  eyes 
Were  utterly  forgotten,  and  what  I  saw 
Appeared  like  something  in  myself,  a  dream, 
A  prospect  in  the  mind. 

Idem,  11.  330-352. 

What  is   this   but  the  beatific  vision  of  the  natural 
divinity  ? 

Wordsworth  spent  the  last  fifty  years  of  his  life  at 
Grasmere  and  Rydal,  but  his  boyhood  and  youth  are 
associated  with  the  outskirts  of  the  Lake  District,  with 
Cockermouth,  and  Hawkshead,  and,  after  his  father 
died,  in  1783,  with  Penrith.  A  home  which  was  no 
home  was  somewhat  grudgingly  provided  by  his 
maternal  grandfather,  a  "  mercer,"  who  dwelt,  so  Canon 
Rawnsley  tells  us,  in  the  old  Burrowgate.  The  Penrith 
country,  watered  by  the  Eden,  the  Eamont,  and  the 


29 

Lowther,  unlike  the  lakes  and  mountains,  is  rich  in 
border  castles  and  legendary  associations.  Nature  and 
"  old  Romance  "  are  met  together,  and  in  their  spiritual 
union  Wordsworth  found  a  second  inspiration.  Part 
of  his  second  Long  Vacation  of  1789  was  spent  at 
Penrith.  His  sister  Dorothy  was  once  more,  "after 
separation  desolate,"  his  companion  —  the  "Young 
Lady"  to  whom  he  dedicated  The  Evening  Walk, 
written  in  1789,  but  published  in  1793.  One  of  their 
favourite  excursions  was  to  Brougham  Castle,  which 
once  commanded,  and  still  looks  down  on,  the  meeting 
of  the  Lowther  and  the  Eamont.  Then,  as  now,  the 
"  mouldering  towers  "  were  neglected,  unguarded,  and, 
happily,  unrestored,  and  the  curious  or  reverent  visitor 
could  go  round  about  them  or  climb  them  where  he  could 
and  as  he  dared.  Then,  as  now,  it  was  possible  to  lie 

On  some  turret's  head, 

Catching  from  tufts  of  grass  and  harebell  flowers 
Their  faintest  whisper  to  the  passing  breeze. 

Prelude,  Book  VI.  11.  220-222. 

Eastward,  across  the  Eden,  stretches  the  vast  rampart 
of  Cross  Fell,  seamed  with  misty  hollows,  "a  distant 
wall  of  opal  hills."  To  the  west  and  south-west  are  the 
unfamiliar  shapes  of  distant  mountains,  and  near  at 
hand  the  park-like  vale  of  the  river  Eamont,  no  longer 
"  unnamed  in  song,"  but  named  for  ever  in  one  of  the 
greatest  of  all  songs,  the  Song  of  the  Feast  of 
Brougham  Castle.  It  was  doubtless  in  these  early 
wanderings  on  Penrith  Beacon,  then  a  bare  and  open 


30  POETS'  COUNTRY 

fell,  or  nearer  home  by  Arthur's  Round  Table  and 
Maybrough's  "stones  of  mystic  power,"  to  Yanwath 
Hall,  that  the  brother  and  sister  consecrated  their 
lives  to  each  other  and  to  the  industry  of  song.  The 
Derwent  sent  his  voice  along  his  childhood's  dream,  the 
Rotha  (or,  to  be  severely  accurate,  the  Raise  Beck) 
flows  by  his  grave,  but  "Eamont's  murmur  mingled" 
with  all  the  glad  anticipations  of  "  youth's  golden  gleam." 

The  six  years  which  followed  this  home-coming 
was  one  protracted  "  wander-year."  They  made  and 
unmade  him  a  republican  and  a  revolutionary.  They 
helped  to  mould  the  man  by  compressing  and  con- 
centrating his  aspirations,  by  informing  him  what  he 
should  not  do,  and  whither  his  steps  should  not  turn, 
but  they  left  him  as  they  found  him,  a  poet  and  not  a 
man  of  the  world. 

A  small  legacy  and  the  offer  of  a  furnished  house,  a 
garden,  and  an  orchard  rent-free  brought  his  wanderings 
to  a  final  close.  In  October  1795  the  brother  and  sister 
took  up  their  quarters  at  Racedown  Lodge,  a  small 
farmhouse  on  the  north-west  slope  of  Pilsdon  Pen. 
Lewston  Hill  (the  "  Lewesdon  Hill  "  of  Crowe's  Poem), 
its  "tall  twin  brother,"  stands  a  little  to  the  east.  The 
house,  which  is  built  foursquare  to  all  the  winds  of 
heaven,  is  not  without  its  dignities  and  amenities  in 
respect  of  panelling  and  finely  moulded  ceilings.  "  Our 
common  parlour,"  wrote  Dorothy,  "is  the  prettiest  little 
room  that  can  be."  The  upper  rooms,  which  are  not 
so  very  little,  command  a  view  of  upland  woods  and 


WORDSWORTH  31 

"  steepy  "  downs.  Close  to  the  house  is  a  kitchen  garden, 
and  on  its  walls  and  in  many  a  chink  and  cranny  of  the 
walls  of  the  house  clumps  of  hart's -tongue  and  wall- 
rue  and  spleenwort  find  "  a  harbour  and  a  hold."  The 
house  stands  back  from  the  public  road  between 
Crewkerne  and  Axminster,  at  the  farther  end  of  a  park- 
like  field  or  paddock  dotted  with  more  than  one  huge 
oak-tree.  It  was  across  this  pathless  field,  "by  which 
he  cut  off  an  angle,"  that  Coleridge  at  the  end  of  a 
forty-mile  walk  from  Nether  Stowey  in  Somersetshire, 
"bounded,"  one  summer  evening  in  1797,  when  he 
paid  his  first  visit  to  Racedown.  "  He  did  not  keep  to 
the  high  road,  but  leapt  over  a  gate."  More  than  fifty 
years  afterwards  the  aged  poet  and  his  sister  "  retained 
the  liveliest  possible  image  of  his  appearance." 

During  the  eighteen  months  which  Wordsworth 
spent  at  Racedown  he  wrote  his  tragedy  of  The  Borderers, 
and  he  began  the  story  of  Margaret  and  the  Ruined 
Cottage  which  was  afterwards  incorporated  in  the  First 
Book  of  The  Excursion.  He  says  that  "for  several 
passages  describing  the  employment  and  demeanour  of 
Margaret  during  her  affliction  I  am  indebted  to  obser- 
vations made  in  Dorsetshire " ;  but  there  is  hardly  a 
trace  of  Dorsetshire  scenery  in  either  the  drama  or  the 
poem.  Of  Pilsdon  or  Lewesdon,  which  reminded 
Dorothy  of  "  her  native  wilds,"  or  of  Lyme  or  Pinney, 
"  with  its  green  chasms  between  romantic  rocks,"  which 
delighted  Miss  Austen,  there  is  never  a  word.  When 
she  was  in  Scotland  by  the  "waters  of  Leven," 


32  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Dorothy  missed  "the  smoke  of  the  cottages  rising  in 
distinct  volumes  towards  the  sky,"  as  she  had  seen  them 
"in  the  vale  or  basin  below  Pilsdon  in  Dorsetshire"; 
but  her  brother,  lover  of  chimneys  and  lover  of 
smoke-wreaths  as  he  was,  left  even  the  chimneys  unsung. 
Once,  perhaps  in  The  Borderers  (Act  in.  lines  1294- 
1296),  one  touch  of  Nature  is  transferred  from  seaward 
Lewesdon  or  Blackdon  to  "Scotland's  waste": — 

Here  is  a  tree,  ragged  and  bent  and  bare, 

That  turns  its  goat's-beard  flakes  of  pea-green  moss 

From  the  stern  breathing  of  the  rough  sea-wind  ; 

and  in  the  description  of  the  neglected  cottage  in  the 
First  Book  of  The  Excursion  : — 

The  honeysuckle,  crowding  round  the  porch, 
and  that  bright  weed, 

The  yellow  stone-crop,  suffered  to  take  root 
Along  the  window's  edge  ; 

Book  I.  11.  715-717. 

or  in  that  "image  of  tranquillity"  which  consoled  the 
Wanderer  when  all  was  over  and  "  he  returned  fondly  " 
to  the  dead  woman's  deserted  house  : — 

Those  very  plumes, 

Those  weeds,  and  the  high  spear-grass  on  that  wall 
By  mist  and  silent  rain-drops  silvered  o'er, 

11.  942-944. 

we  "  rather  feel  than  see  "  the  breathing  of  the  "  gentle 
south-west  wind." 

Again,  in  the  first  version  of  Goody  Blake  and 
Harry  Gill,  as  published  in  1798,  there  was  a  verse 
which  actually  fixes  the  scene  as  near  to  Racedown  : — 


THE   RIVER  EDEN 

The  Eden  river  from  the  rocks  at  Armthwaite  painted 
at  the  harvest  moon  time. 

Eden  !  till  now  thy  beauty  had  I  viewed 
By  glimpses  only,  and  confess  with  shame 
That  verse  of  mine,  whate'er  its  varying  mood, 
Repeats  but  once  the  sound  of  thy  sweet  name  : 
Yet  fetched  from  Paradise  that  honour  came, 
Rightfully  borne  ;  for  Nature  gives  thee  flowers 
That  have  no  rivals  among  British  bowers  ; 
And  thy  bold  rocks  are  worthy  of  their  fame. 
Measuring  thy  course,  fair  Stream  !  at  length  I  pay 
To  my  life's  neighbour  dues  of  neighbourhood  ; 
But  I  have  traced  thee  on  thy  winding  way 
With  pleasure  sometimes  by  this  thought  restrained — 
For  things  far  off  we  toil,  while  many  a  good 
Not  sought,  because  too  near,  is  never  gained. 

WORDSWORTH. 


^^r 

J 


WORDSWORTH  33 

This  woman  dwelt  in  Dorsetshire, 
Her  hut  was  on  a  cold  hill-side, 
And  in  that  country  coals  are  dear, 
For  they  come  far  by  wind  and  tide. 

But  alas !  for  consistency  and  for  theories,  in  1820  this 
stanza  was  suppressed  and  a  genuine  touch  of  poetic 
reminiscence  was  substituted  : — 

Remote  from  sheltered  village-green, 
On  a  hill's  northern  side  she  dwelt, 
Where  from  sea-blasts  the  hawthorns  lean, 
And  hoary  dews  are  slow  to  melt. 

It  is  not  to  be  believed  that  Racedown,  its  aspects, 
its  prospects,  or  "  the  pleasant  walks  "  in  its  neighbour- 
hood made  no  impression  on  Wordsworth,  or  that  he 
despised  the  South,  but  his  mind  was  preoccupied  with 
the  greater  memories  of  his  youth.  He  had  been  born 
"  among  the  mountains,"  and  there  was  nothing  like  or 
second  to  their  revelation  of  the  mystery  and  majesty 
of  Nature. 

In  July  1797  the  Wordsworths  paid  Coleridge  a 
return  visit,  and  whilst  they  were  staying  at  his  cottage 
at  Nether  Stowey,  in  the  course  of  a  "  wander  by  them- 
selves," they  found  out  "a  sequestered  waterfall  in  a 
dell  formed  by  steep  hills,  covered  with  full-grown 
timber  trees."  They  were  enchanted  with  the  spot, 
and  amused  themselves  with  some  dreams  of  happiness 
which  might  be  realised  in  a  cottage  near  the  dell  and 
within  reach  of  the  "society  of  Coleridge."  As  luck 

would  have  it,  the  manor-house  of  Alfoxden,  a  quarter  of 

D 


34  POETS'  COUNTRY 

a  mile  from  the  dell,  was  vacant,  and,  apparently  with- 
out returning  to  bid  farewell  to  Racedown,  they  moved 
from  the  cottage  to  "  a  large  mansion,  in  a  large  park, 
with  seventy  head  of  deer  around  us." 

From  Stowey  the  road  winds  uphill  for  two  miles 
or  more,  till  you  reach  a  broken  common  at  the  foot 
of  a  steep  grassy  enclosure.  Here  are  two  or  three 
cottages  (in  one  of  them  lived  the  old  huntsman  "  Simon 
Lee  ")  enclosed  in  tiny  gardens  crowded  with  fruit-trees. 
A  dark  wood  borders  the  common,  and,  close  to  the 
cottages,  is  an  entrance  gate  to  a  gentleman's  seat  or 
place.  Go  through  the  gate — there  is  a  right-of-way, 
a  right  of  human  as  well  as  divine  law — and  you  will 
find  yourself  in  a  long  winding  drive,  with  huge  holly 
and  beech-trees  on  either  hand.  A  quarter  of  a  mile  of 
dark  wood  and  you  emerge  into  a  park — a  park,  not 
a  big  field,  though  its  size  is  small  in  comparison  with 
the  featureless  prairies  of  modern  farming.  On  the 
left  the  bracken  -  clad  slope  stretches  up  into  the 
Quantocks,  and  to  the  right  there  is  the  great  inland 
sea — the  Bristol  Channel — with  the  Welsh  mountains 
in  the  distance.  The  manor-house  itself — now  double 
in  size  to  what  it  was  in  Wordsworth's  day, — is  a  many- 
windowed,  green-slated  mansion,  not  unlike  Kensington 
Palace  on  a  small  scale.  Beyond  the  manor-house  and 
up  and  beyond  towards  the  hills  is  a  long  row  of 
magnificent  beeches,  on  one  of  which  Wordsworth  is 
said  to  have  carved  his  name.  In  his  opening  lines 
to  The  Excursion  Wordsworth  proclaims,  perhaps  a 


WORDSWORTH  35 

little  sententiously,  "  How  exquisitely  the  individual 
Mind 

To  the  external  World 
Is  fitted  : — and  how  exquisitely,  too — 
The  external  World  is  fitted  to  the  Mind  ! 

Well,  it  would  be  true  to  say  of  Alfoxden  that  the 
hand  of  man  has  been  guided  by  Nature,  and  that 
Nature  has  blessed  the  handiwork  of  man.  "  The 
house,"  wrote  Dorothy,  "is  a  large  mansion,  with 
furniture  enough  for  a  dozen  families  like  ours.  .  .  . 
The  garden  is  at  the  end  of  the  house,  and  our  favourite 
parlour,  as  at  Racedown,  looks  that  way.  In  front  is  a 
little  court,  with  grass-plat,  gravel  walk,  and  shrubs ; 
the  moss  roses  were  in  a  full  beauty  a  month  ago." 
Now  it  was  in  front  of  Alfoxden,  in  the  road  between 
Stowey  and  Alfoxden,  in  the  grove  or  groves  of 
Alfoxden,  that  most  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads  of  1798 
were  composed,  and  yet  these  experiments  in  verse, 
with  their  appeal  from  art  to  nature,  present  but  few 
pictures  of  the  poet's  home  or  of  his  wanderings  in  the 
neighbourhood.  They  breathe  the  air  of  the  country, 
but  not  of  the  particular  county  in  which  they  were 
composed.  But  though  he  was  singing  in  a  strange 
land,  he  does  occasionally  take  note  of  the  trees  which 
were  therein.  For  instance,  A  Whirl-Blast  from  behind 
the  Hill,  in  the  "  language  of  conversation  in  the  middle 
and  lower  classes  of  society"  (Preface  to  Lyrical 
Ballads,  1798),  may  be  described  as  a  "snap-shot"  of 
a  hailstorm  in  an  undergrove  of  hollies  : — 


36  POETS'  COUNTRY 

But  see  !  where'er  the  hailstones  drop, 
The  withered  leaves  all  skip  and  hop ; 
There's  not  a  breeze — no  breath  of  air — 
Yet  here,  and  there,  and  everywhere 
Along  the  floor,  beneath  the  shade 
By  those  embowering  hollies  made, 
The  leaves  in  myriads  jump  and  spring. 

The  "aged  thorn"  —  a  mass  of  knotted  joints,  "A 
wretched  thing  forlorn  " — grew  on  Quantock's  edge,  and 
the  "  little  muddy  pond,"  which  measured  "  three  feet 
long  and  two  feet  wide,"  was  somewhere  "Crookham 
(i.e.  Crowcombe)  way,"  "an  impressive  object"  to  one 
who  had  eyes  to  see,  and  Lyrical  Ballads  on  the  stocks ; 
and  in  the  Lines  to  my  Sister,  which  contains  a  "  shorter 
catechism  "  of  the  "  Wordsworthian  faith  and  doctrine," 

The  red-breast  sings  from  the  tall  larch 
That  stands  beside  our  door. 

Forty-three  years  later,  when  Wordsworth  revisited 
Alfoxden,  the  "  larch "  was  in  situ,  but  "  it  had  not 
improved  in  appearance  as  to  size,  nor  had  it  acquired 
anything  of  the  majesty  of  age."  Alas,  poor  larch  ! 

I've  heard  of  hearts  unkind,  kind  deeds 
With  coldness  still  returning ! 

The  aged  poet  should  not  have  passed  judgment  on  the 
aged  larch. 

Finally,  in  The  Danish  Soy,  which  glances  at  the 
Quantock  legend  that  the  clarions  of  dead  Danish 
warriors  sounding  their  last  retreat  may  still  be  heard 


RYDAL  WATER 

Rydal  Water,  hard  by  Rydal  Mount,  where  Wordsworth 
lived  for  thirty-seven  years,  shows  the  lake  scenery  in  its 
gentler  aspect.  In  the  group  of  trees  to  the  right  is  a 
large  rock  called  the  Poet's  Seat,  a  favourite  resort  of 
Wordsworth's.  There  he  probably  composed  his  lines  on 
•"  Rydal  Mere,"  beginning— 

The  linnet's  warble,  sinking  towards  a  close, 
Hints  to  the  thrush  'tis  time  for  their  repose. 


. 


WORDSWORTH  37 

on  still  days  in  summer,  there  is  one  perfect  picture  of 
Quantock  scenery  with  a  tree  in  the  foreground  : — 

Between  two  sister  moorland  rills 
There  is  a  spot  that  seems  to  lie 
Sacred  to  flowerets  of  the  hills 
And  sacred  to  the  sky. 
And  in  this  smooth  and  open  dell 
There  is  a  tempest-stricken  tree,  etc. 

Add  to  these  some  lines  in  A  Night  Piece  descriptive 
of  "the  sky  spread  over  with  one  continuous  cloud, 
whitened  by  the  light  of  the  moon  "  (D.  Wordsworth's 
Journal,  January  25,  1798),  which  reappear  in 
Christabel : — 

The  thin  gray  cloud  is  spread  on  high, 
It  covers  but  not  hides  the  sky ; 

and  the  mention  rather  than  the  description  of  "  Kilve's 
smooth  shore,  by  the  green  sea  " — and  the  list  of  "  images 
derived  from  the  Nether  Stowey  environment"  (Note 
to  the  Ancient  Mariner,  by  T.  Hutchinson)  is  well-nigh 
exhausted. 

It  was  Coleridge  who  sang  of  the  "  hidden  brook  "  and 
the  "  never  bloomless  furze,"  of  the  songs  of  the  nightin- 
gales, of  the  prospect  and  the  main.  It  was  Coleridge, 
not  Wordsworth,  who  strung  the  "  Harp  of  Quantock." 

In  June  1799  Wordsworth's  lease  of  Alfoxden 
expired,  and  as  the  fact  that  his  uncle  was  a  Canon  of 
Windsor  did  not  atone  for  the  fact  that  he  was  a  friend 
of  Coleridge,  and  an  acquaintance  of  Coleridge's  friend 
Thelwall,  he  was  turned  adrift.  Early  in  July  he 


38  POETS'  COUNTRY 

started  for  a  walk  on  the  banks  of  the  Wye,  and  on 
returning  to  Bristol  he  wrote  the  famous  Lines  com- 
posed .  .  .  above  Tintern  Abbey.  It  is  worth  noting 
that  on  revisiting  the  auguster  scenery  of  "sylvan 
Wye," 

Those  waters  rolling  from  their  mountain  springs 
With  a  soft  inland  murmur. 

those  steep  and  lofty  cliffs, 

he  returns  to  the  more  immediate  service  of  Nature, 
and  remembers  the  days  that  were  past : — 

The  sounding  cataract 
Haunted  me  like  a  passion ;  the  tall  rock, 
The  mountain,  and  the  deep  and  gloomy  wood, 
Their  colours  and  their  forms,  were  then  to  me 
An  appetite  ;  a  feeling  and  a  love, 
That  had  no  need  of  a  remoter  charm. 

At  length  (December  20,  1799),  after  a  six  months' 
residence  in  the  imperial  city  of  Goslar,  and  a  pro- 
longed visit  to  their  friends  and  future  connections, 
the  Hutchinsons  of  Sockburn,  on  "  peninsulatory " 
Tees,  William  and  Dorothy  Wordsworth  reached  the 
haven  where  they  would  be,  the  "  one  cottage  "  of  their 
hopes  and  dreams,  then  and  for  long  afterwards  known 
as  Town  End,  so  called  because  it  is  the  last  house  on 
the  road  from  Grasmere  to  Ambleside.  In  former  days 
it  had  been  a  wayside  inn  where  "  the  Dove  and  Olive 
Bough  once  hung,"  and  hence  some  fifty  or  more  years 
ago  it  was  renamed  and  misnamed  "  Dove  Cottage " ; 
but  to  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  and  De  Quincey,  and 


WORDSWORTH  39 

even  within  my  own  memory,  it  was  Town  End.  Name 
it  as  you  please,  it  stands  at  the  "  bottom  of  the  brow  " 
of  White  Moss,  "  a  tossed  and  broken  height  of  knolls 
of  rock  and  grass  and  pools,"  as  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke 
so  well  describes  it,  which  all  but  divides  the  vale  of 
Grasmere  from  the  vale  of  Rydal.  It  looked,  but  looks 
no  more,  across  the  lake  to  Silver  How  and  Hammer 
Scar,  and  thence,  to  the  right,  to  Helm  Crag  and 
the  overlapping  folds  and  ridges  of  the  Easedale 
Mountains.  To  the  south  of  the  latter  stood,  and 
stands,  a  yew  tree,  dark  against  the  whitewashed  wall, 
and  round  the  yew  tree  and  "  up  the  side  of  the  wall " 
grew  a  honeysuckle.  Roses  and  jasmine  made  sweet 
the  front  of  the  house,  but,  before  these  were  fully 
grown,  the  green  leaves  and  scarlet  flowers  of  the 
runner  bean  were  trained  on  threads  for  use  and 
"goodly  show."  It  was  not  a  very  small  cottage 
after  all — "a  lowly  dwelling,"  no  doubt,  but  not  a 
labourer's  cottage.  De  Quincey  depicts  the  interior 
of  the  cottage  as  he  saw  it,  for  the  second  time,  in 
October  1807.  He  is  not,  perhaps,  so  minute  or  so 
accurate  as  the  Collegium  Criticum  "  could  have  wished," 
but  he  is  accurate  enough : — "  We  lifted  the  latch, 
passed  underneath  the  porch,  still  covered  with  wild 
flowers,  .  .  .  and  stepped  into  the  little  inner  vestibule 
which  prefaced  the  entrance,  into  what  might  be  con- 
sidered the  principal  room  of  the  cottage.  It  was  an 
oblong  square,  not  above  eight  and  a  half  feet  high, 
sixteen  feet  long,  and  twelve  broad,  very  prettily  wain- 


40  POETS'  COUNTRY 

scotted  with  dark  polished  oak,  slightly  embellished  with 
carving.  One  window  there  was,  a  perfect  and  unpre- 
tending cottage  window,  with  little  diamond  panes 
embowered  at  almost  every  season  of  the  year  with  a 
profusion  of  jasmine  and  other  fragrant  shrubs."  Above 
this  "  principal  room,"  and  almost  of  the  same  size,  was 
Wordsworth's  book -room  and  living-room,  where  he 
wrote  his  poems  and  received  the  few  guests  who  came 
to  the  cottage.  Here  (or  was  it  in  the  room  below  ?) 
"flapped  the  flame"  of  his  "half-kitchen,  half-parlour 
fire,"  and  here  he  would  sit  without  "emotion,  hope, 
or  aim,"  when  no  guests  came  and  there  was  no  occasion 
for  personal  talk.  There  was  a  recess  in  which  he  kept 
his  books — friends  who  might  talk  at  will,  and  he  would 
listen  with  a  ready  ear.  Adjoining  this  upper  room 
were  Wordsworth's  bedroom  and  a  spare  room  for 
guests — oftenest,  at  first,  for  Coleridge  and  for  Mary 
and  Sarah  Hutchinson,  and  for  Captain  John  Words- 
worth— but,  afterwards,  for  such  friends  of  "  strength 
and  state"  as  Walter  Scott,  and  Southey,  and  Thomas 
Clarkson,  and  Sir  George  and  Lady  Beaumont. 
Dorothy's  bedroom  was  below  Wordsworth's,  on  the 
ground  floor.  To  the  east  of  the  house  and  at  the  back 
there  was  a  small  garden  running  up  into  a  hanging 
orchard.  Wordsworth,  with  a  neighbour's  help,  cut 
steps  in  the  rocky  slope  to  ease  the  ascent  to  a  short 
terrace  walk  which  looked  down  on  the  house  and 
commanded  a  view  of  the  lake  and  mountains.  Above 
the  steps  to  the  right  Coleridge  discovered  a  rock  seat 


WORDSWORTH  41 

"by  clearing  away  the  brambles."     Below  the  terrace 
walk  was  a  little  well : — 

Here,  thronged  with  primroses,  the  steep  rock's  breast 
Glittered  at  evening  like  a  starry  sky  ; 
And  in  this  bush  our  sparrow  built  her  nest, 
Of  which  I  sang  one  song  that  will  not  die. 

A  Farewell,  11.  53-56. 

It  was  in  the  orchard  and,  afterwards,  in  a  "  moss 
arbour  "  at  one  end  of  the  "  terrace  walk,"  "  this  Bower, 
this  Indian  shed,  Our  own  contrivance,  Building  with- 
out peer,"  that  most  of  the  poems  of  the  first  year  at 
Grasmere  were  composed  and  written  down.  One  only 
need  be  named,  "  The  Cuckoo,"  whose  "wandering  voice" 
will  sound  "  at  once  far  off  and  near,"  as  long  as  there  is 
any  "  demand  "  for  poetry.  He  gave  back  what  he  had 
received,  the  message  from  Nature  to  man  ;  not  hints  for 
the  better  appreciation  of  artistic  or  scenic  effects,  not  a 
taste  or  fancy  for  the  "  wood  and  rills,"  but  a  revelation 
of  the  things  that  are  not  seen,  "  the  silence  that  is  in 
the  starry  sky,  the  sleep  that  is  among  the  lonely  hills." 

Wordsworth  married  in  1802,  and,  as  his  family 
increased  (three  children  were  born  at  Town  End),  he 
was  forced  to  move  into  a  larger  house.  Now  it  chanced 
that  a  Liverpool  merchant,  a  Mr.  Crump,  had  "pre- 
sumed to  build  a  new  house  for  himself  upon  that 
beautiful  ridge  which  elbows  out  into  the  vale  behind 
the  church."  The  new  house,  not  yet  named  Allan 
Bank,  faced  both  ways  towards  Grasmere  and  towards 
Easedale,  and  was  full  in  view  of  "that  magnificent 


42  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Temple  which  doth  bound  one  side  of  the  whole  vale," 
the  side  which  is  not  visible  from  Town  End.  It  was 
a  "  large  house  with  plenty  of  room,"  and  before  it  was 
finished  Wordsworth  secured  possession,  on  a  six 
months'  agreement.  Allan  Bank  was  the  first  villa 
residence  that  "ever  burst"  into  Grasmere.  Words- 
worth had  denounced  it  as  a  "  temple  of  abomination," 
and  prophesied  that  henceforth  the  vale  would  lose  its 
"character  of  simplicity  and  seclusion."  But  there  is 
a  divinity  which  shapes  our  theories  by  our  practical 
requirements,  and  poetic  or  prosaic  justice  decreed  that 
for  three  years  "  this  temple  of  abomination  "  should  be 
a  temple  of  the  Muses.  It  is  here  that  he  wrote  the 
greater  part  of  The  Excursion,  and  here  where  little 
Catherine — "  the  only  funny  child  in  the  family  " — was 
born  that  he  described  her  "  Characteristics,"  whilst  she 
was  yet  alive  : — 

Loving  she  is,  and  tractable,  though  wild  : 
And  Innocence  hath  privilege  in  her 
To  dignify  arch  looks  and  laughing  eyes  ; 
And  feats  of  cunning  :  and  the  pretty  round 
Of  trespasses,  affected  to  provoke 
Mock-chastisement  and  partnership  in  play. 

And  it  was  here,  too,  that  Coleridge  projected  a  weekly 
newspaper,  that  "literary,  moral,  and  political"  Friend, 

Whom  there  were  none  to  praise, 
And  very  few  to  love. 

Wordsworth's  next  home  (1811-1812)  was  the  old 
Rectory  or  parsonage  which  faced  the  west  end  and 


GRASMERE   CHURCH 

Here  is  Wordsworth's  grave. 

The  church  among  the  mountains. 

The  Excursion. 


43 

tower  of  Grasmere  Church.  This  was  a  house  of 
sorrow,  for  here,  in  June  1812,  he  lost  his  little  Catherine, 
and  before  the  year  had  closed  his  third  child,  Thomas, 
lay  by  her  side.  The  daily  and  hourly  sight  of  their 
graves  was  more  than  his  heart  could  bear,  and  in  March 
1813  he  removed  to  Rydal  Mount.  It  was  the  home  of 
his  choice,  of  his  love  and  of  his  care,  and  it  remained 
his  home  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  Rydal  Mount  nestles 
in  a  tree-clad  spur  of  Nab  Scar,  a  furlong  off  and  above 
the  high-road  from  Grasmere  to  Ambleside.  Bishop 
Wordsworth  in  the  Memoirs  of  his  uncle  has  once  for 
all  described  the  house  and  garden  as  it  was  when  the 
poet  died  in  April  1850.  "  It  is  a  modest  mansion  of  a 
sober  hue,  tinged  with  weather  stains,  with  two  tiers 
of  five  windows  ;  on  the  right  of  these  is  a  porch,  and 
above,  and  to  the  right,  are  two  other  windows  ;  the 
highest  looks  out  of  what  was  the  Poet's  bedroom.  .  .  . 
The  house  is  mantled  over  .  .  .  with  roses  and  ivy  and 
jessamine  and  Virginia  creeper."  In  front  of  the  house 
there  is  a  "  semicircular  area  or  platform  of  grey  *  gravel,' 
and  from  this  platform  a  flight  of  low  stone  steps 
descends  to  the  foot  of  the  Mount.  Yellow  poppies  and 
bright  maidenhair,  growing  where  and  as  they  can,  make 
glad  this  scala  santa.  The  Mount  itself  consists  of  a 
turf-clad  ring  surmounting  an  outer  circle,  and  marks 
the  site  of  some  prehistoric  *  goings  on.'  Westward  of 
the  house  are  terraces,  some  250  feet  in  length.  The 
upper  terrace  ends  in  a  small  summer-house  lined  with 
fir-cones,  from  which  there  is,  or  rather  was,  before  the 


44  POETS'  COUNTRY 

further  door  was  removed,  a  *  surprise  view '  of  Rydal 
Lake  and  of  Loughrigg  Fell.  Below  the  sloping  terrace, 
which  is  reached  by  a  flight  of  fourteen  steps,  and  parallel 
to  it,  runs  a  level  terrace  which  was  specially  constructed 
for  the  use  of  Wordsworth's  friend  and  amanuensis,  Mrs. 
Isabella  Fenwick.  Beyond  the  summer-house  a  'far 
terrace,'  shaped  by  the  poet  and  worn  by  his  feet,  winds 
'in  a  serpentine  line  of  about  150  feet,'  and  ends  at  a 
little  gate,  beyond  which  is  a  beautiful  well  of  clear 
water,  called  'the  Nab  Well.'"  To  the  south  of  the 
kitchen  garden,  which  lies  below  the  terraces,  is  "  Dora's 
field."  Here  was  the  pollard  willow  where  primroses 
sheltered  a  wren's  nest,  and  here  is  the  "  elfin  pool " 
where  the  gold  and  silver  fish,  no  longer  confined  to 
their  "glassy  cell,"  enjoyed  their  liberty.  I  can  recall 
the  terraces,  and  the  summer-house,  the  platform  of 
grey  gravel,  the  yellow  poppies  which  "flattered"  the 
broad  stone  steps  and  the  "  fairy  mound  "  when  I  visited 
Rydal  Mount  in  1852  and  1853.  I  can  testify  that  they 
were  in  their  place — that  "  they  kept  the  same,"  a  few 
months  ago.  "  I  have  heard  the  hearers  say  "  that 
Wordsworth  went  "sounding  on  his  way" — murmur- 
ing or  booming  his  verses  as  he  paced  up  and  down 
the  level  terrace,  and  I  have  heard  the  "  wild-eyed " 
Dorothy  recite  her  own  beautiful  lines  : — 

The  worship  of  this  Sabbath  morn, 
How  sweetly  it  begins  ! 
With  the  full  choral  hymn  of  birds 
Mingles  no  sad  lament  for  sins. 


WORDSWORTH  45 

I  cannot  recall  her  features,  but  I  have  never  forgotten 
the  sound  of  her  deep-toned  impassioned  voice. 

"Turn  wheresoe'er  we  may,"  to  the  tall  ash 
tree  in  the  garden,  to  the  laburnum  in  which  the 
osier  cage  of  the  doves  was  hung,  or  to  the  "  Rydalian 
laurels"  which  overhang  the  upper  terrace,  there  is 
some  tender  association  with  the  memory  of  the  great 
poet  "who  gave  us  nobler  loves  and  nobler  cares." 
Town  End,  or,  if  so  it  must  be,  "Dove  Cottage," 
is  held  in  trust  for  the  nation.  Year  by  year  the 
number  of  visitors  increases.  Rydal  Mount  is  not 
shown  to  the  public,  but  its  inhabitants  bear  the 
poet's  name,  and  loyally  and  reverently  "keep  up  the 
traditions  of  the  place."  Never  did  poet  merit  or  obtain 
a  fitter  or  fairer  "  home  "  than  Rydal  Mount. 


BYRON 

SHELLEY  alludes  to  Byron  as  "  The  Pilgrim  of  Eternity." 
That  he  may  have  been  or  may  be.  It  is  certain  that, 
whilst  he  was  a  Pilgrim  of  Time,  he  had  no  abiding- 
place  ;  that  he  lived  or  lodged  in  so  many  houses  that 
Time  would  fail  to  read  the  reckoning.  I  cannot 
pretend,  in  his  own  words,  to  have  "  turned  to  pilgrim  " 
to  more  than  one  of  these  spots,  and  of  the  residue  I 
can  only  speak  at  second-hand. 

George  Gordon  Byron  was  born,  on  January  23, 
1782,  in  the  back  drawing-room  of  the  first  floor  of 
No.  16  Holies  Street,  Cavendish  Square.  It  was  after- 
wards numbered  24,  and  is  now  destroyed.  Only  the 
site  remains.  Byron  passed  his  childhood  in  a  "  shabby 
Scotch  flat "  in  Aberdeen — at  first  in  Queen  Street,  then 
in  Virginia  Street,  then  in  Broad  Street.  Here  are 
shrines  enough  for  a  conscientious  pilgrim.  Some  one 
told  Moore  that  Mrs.  Byron  and  her  "  wee  Geordie " 
lodged  at  one  end  of  Queen  Street,  and  her  husband, 
who  was  not  an  exemplary  character,  at  the  other. 
On  one  occasion,  by  request,  the  child  passed  the  night 
with  its  fond  father.  This  happened  "  but  once  only." 

46 


BYRON  47 

Captain  Byron  had  seen  quite  enough  of  his  young 
visitor.  There  is  a  picture  of  Byron  aet.  seven,  a 
ringleted  wax  figure,  dressed  up  as  an  archer.  He 
appears  in  better  guise  as  "the  little  boy  in  a  red 
jacket  and  nankeen  trousers."  Now  he  is  being  turned 
out  of  the  courtyard  of  the  Grammar  School ;  and  now 
he  is  slowly  hastening  to  the  Plain  Stanes,  to  unpack 
his  heart  to  his  cousin  Mary  Duff ;  and  now,  in  defiance 
of  the  adage,  he  is  peering  over  "  Balgounie's  brig's 
black  wall "  into  "  the  black,  deep,  salmon  stream  below." 
The  only  son  of  Mrs.  Byron,  he  could  not  forget  he 
was  "  a  mear's  ae  foal " !  But  it  was  in  the  summer 
holidays  at  a  farmhouse  at  Ballaterich  that  he  began, 
in  heart  and  soul,  to  be  a  poet.  It  was  here  that  he 
learned  to  swim  in  "  the  billows  of  Dee's  rushing  tide  " ; 
and  there  that  he  "  climbed  very  well — though  he  had 
a  limp  ...  by  the  footpath  of  Loch-an-euan "  to  the 
top  of  "dark  Loch-na-gar."  Here,  too,  there  was  a 
Mary — Mary  Robertson — descended,  so  it  is  said,  from 
a  Lord  of  the  Isles.  Gentle  or  simple,  she  died  "at 
Aberdeen,  March  2,  1867,  aged  eighty-five  years,"  and 
she  must  have  been  a  big  girl  of  fourteen  or  fifteen 
when  Byron  was  nine  and  a  half,  and  "loved  her — 
even  so."  But  while  Marys,  "  Highland  "  or  otherwise, 
came  and  went,  his  love  for  Highland  scenery  was  an 
abiding  passion.  For  pieces  justificatives  see  The  Island 
(Canto  ii.  11.  280-291),  which  was  written  at  Genoa  in 
1823,  and  the  accompanying  footnote  : — 


48  POETS'  COUNTRY 

He  who  first  met  the  Highlands'  swelling  blue 

Will  love  each  peak  that  shows  a  kindred  hue, 

Hail  in  each  crag  a  friend's  familiar  face, 

And  clasp  the  mountain  in  his  Mind's  embrace. 

Long  have  I  roamed  through  lands  which  are  not  mine, 

Adored  the  Alp,  and  loved  the  Apennine, 

Revered  Parnassus,  and  beheld  the  steep 

Jove's  Ida  and  Olympus  crown  the  deep : 

But  'twas  not  all  long  ages'  lore,  nor  all 

Their  nature  held  me  in  their  thrilling  thrall ; 

The  infant  rapture  still  survived  the  boy, 

And  Loch-na-gar  with  Ida  looked  o'er  Troy, 

Mixed  Celtic  memories  with  the  Phrygian  mount, 

And  Highland  linns  with  Castalie's  clear  fount. 

Forgive  me,  Homer's  universal  shade ! 

Forgive  me,  Phoebus  !  that  my  fancy  strayed  ; 

The  North  and  Nature  taught  me  to  adore 

Your  scenes  sublime,  from  those  beloved  before. 

Note. — When  very  young,  about  eight  years  of  age  ...  I  was 
removed  .  .  .  into  the  Highlands.  Here  I  passed  .  .  .  some 
summers,  and  from  this  period  I  date  my  love  of  mountainous 
countries.  I  can  never  forget  the  effect,  a  few  years  afterwards, 
in  England  ...  of  a  mountain,  in  the  Malvern  Hills.  After  I 
returned  to  Cheltenham,  I  used  to  watch  them  every  afternoon,  at 
sunset,  with  a  sensation  which  I  cannot  describe. 

When  he  was  ten  years  old,  Byron  succeeded  to  his 
great-uncle's  title  and  estates.  Moore  tells  a  story  that 
the  first  time  the  little  boy  in  the  red  jacket  heard  his 
name  called  out  at  school  as  "Dominus  "  Byron,  he  "stood 
silent  amid  the  general  shout  of  his  schoolfellows,  and 
at  last  burst  into  tears."  Was  he  gifted  with  second 
sight,  and  did  "all  things  reel  around  him"  as  they 
reeled  long  afterwards  when  he  stood  "before  an 
altar "  ?  A  month  or  two  later  his  mother  quitted 


NEWSTEAD   ABBEY 

The  remains  of  an  Augustinian  monastery  founded  by 
Henry  II.  in  expiation  of  the  murder  of  Thomas  a  Becket. 

Newstead  !  fast-falling,  once-resplendent  dome  ! 

Religion's  shrine  !  repentant  Henry's  pride  ! 
Of  Warriors,  Monks,  and  Dames  the  cloister'd  tomb, 

Whose  pensive  shades  around  thy  ruins  glide, 

Hail  to  thy  pile  !  more  honour'd  in  thy  fall 
Than  modern  mansions  in  their  pillar'd  state  ; 

Proudly  majestic  frowns  thy  vaulted  hall, 
Scowling  defiance  on  the  blasts  of  fate. 

Elegy  on  Newstead  Alley— BYROV. 


BYRON  49 

Scotland  for  ever,  and,  with  her  "ae  son"  and  his  nurse 
May  Grey,  travelled  south  to  Newstead  Abbey.  We 
have  no  record  of  his  first  impressions  when  he  drove 
past  the  lake  and  the  cascade,  and  looked  for  the  first 
time  at  the  fountain  which  stood  in  front  of  the  Abbey, 
and  the  "  grand  arch,"  the  mighty  window  of  the  west 
front  of  the  Priory  Church.  Children  take  most  things 
for  granted,  but  the  "change  from  a  shabby  Scotch 
flat  to  a  palace"  was  of  a  kind  to  excite  the  dullest 
and  least  emotional  of  "human  boys" ;  and  that  Byron 
was  unemotional  is  a  point  "  unseized  by  the  Germans 
yet."  It  was,  no  doubt,  a  moment  of  triumph,  but  it 
was  soon  over.  In  a  few  days  or  a  few  weeks  he 
was  despatched  with  his  nurse  into  lodgings  in  the 
house  of  one  Gill,  who  lived  in  St.  James'  Lane,  Not- 
tingham, and  here  he  composed  his  first  poem  or 
satire  on  an  elderly  lady  who  had  incurred  his  dis- 
pleasure : — 

In  Nottingham  county  there  lives  at  Swan  Green 
As  curst  an  old  lady  as  ever  was  seen ; 
And  when  she  does  die, — which  I  hope  will  be  soon, — 
She  firmly  believes  she  will  go  to  the  moon. 

Moore  somewhat  unkindly  thought  that  it  was  "  possible 
these  rhymes  may  have  been  caught  up  at  second- 
hand." Whoever  "caught  them  up"  did  not  catch 
them  up  securely.  Swan  Green  is  a  bowdlerised  form 
of  "  Swine  Green,"  which  is  or  was  some  kind  of  place 
or  area  about  a  quarter  of  a  mile  to  the  east  of  St. 

James'  Lane.     I  am  firmly  convinced  that  Byron  had 

E 


50  POETS'  COUNTRY 

excellent  reasons  for  disliking  this  old  lady,  and  ex- 
pressed himself  as  unpleasantly  as  he  could.  Some  of 
his  later  poems  are  satirical. 

In  the  following  autumn  his  mother,  acting  upon 
the  advice  of  her  lawyers,  sent  him  to  Dr.  Glennie's 
Academy  at  Dulwich,  then  a  private  school  of  some 
importance.  Dulwich  Grove  stood  on  the  west  side 
of  Lordship  Lane,  and  opposite  the  wooded  footway 
leading  to  the  summit  of  Sydenham  Hill.  It  was  a 
three-storied  suburban  villa  with  a  projecting  bay, 
and  with  what  Byron  would  have  called  a  "balcony" 
in  front.  Originally  the  "Dulwich  Green  Manor,"  it 
had  been  rebuilt  as  a  temporary  residence  for  Lord 
Thurlow,  and  when  that  very  outspoken  personage  had 
done  with  it,  it  was  let  or  sold  to  Dr.  Glennie.  Some 
years  after  Moore  had  begun  his  life  of  Byron  the 
Doctor  died,  the  school  was  broken  up,  and  the  house 
pulled  down.  The  Grove  Hotel,  familiarly  known  as 
"  Bew's  Corner,"  now  occupies  part  of  the  site. 

It  was  whilst  he  was  at  Dulwich  that  Byron  made 
"a  first  dash  into  poetry" — "the  ebullition  of  a 
passion "  for  his  cousin  Margaret  Parker.  The  verses 
perished,  but  twenty  years  after  he  remembered  and 
recalled  that  "  most  beautiful  of  evanescent  beings  " — 
"  her  dark  eyes — her  long  eyelashes !  her  completely 
Greek  cast  of  face  and  figure."  Again  we  can  picture 
him,  a  heavily-built  lad,  with  "a  Greek  cast  of  face," 
though  not  of  figure,  breaking  away  from  those 
"athletic  exercises"  (cricket,  as  one  might  say)  in 


BYRON  51 

which  Moore  says  he  determined  to  excel,  to  dream 
and  sigh,  and  mouth  his  verses  to  himself.  The 
"suburb  lane"  (see  Browning's  Confessions)  which 
bordered  the  garden  of  Dulwich  Grove  and  its  play- 
ing-ground  and  orchard  must  often  have  listened  to 
the  same  sound,  when  Robert  Browning  of  Camberwell, 
and,  again,  when  John  Ruskin  of  Herne  Hill  passed 
that  way.  If,  as  Byron  believed,  places  have  spirits, 
there  must  have  been  some  communication  and  inter- 
change of  the  "  bodiless  thought," 

Whose  half-beholdings  through  unsteady  tears 
Gave  shape,  hue,  distance  to  the  inward  dream. 

S.  T.  C. 

Byron's  next  home  (1801-1805),  and  it  was,  perhaps, 
the  happiest  home  he  ever  knew,  was  Dr.  Drury's 
house  at  Harrow-on-the-Hill.  His  early  poems  are 
full  of  allusions  to  Harrow,  dignified  or  disguised  as 
Ida.  He  tells  us  he  would  "  recline  "  for  hours  on  a 
tombstone  in  Harrow  churchyard,  and  there  Tradition, 
who  is  partial  to  tombstones,  has  "  let  him  lay  "  !  But 
he  also  tells  us  that  he  would  wander  round — it  is  not 
far  to  wander — the  "  steep  brow  of  the  churchyard," 
which  looks  towards  Windsor,  to  watch  the  sunset ; 
but  Tradition,  unmindful  of  sunsets,  is  silent.  For- 
gotten, too,  if  ever  remembered,  is  his  one  allusion  to 
the  plain  or  valley  of  the  Brent,  which  lies  below  the 
wooded  hill  of  Ida.  "  But  these,"  as  he  tells  us  in 
Childish  Recollections,  11.  133-136  (and  "these"  are  they 
who  have  shirked  fielding  at  cricket) : — 


52  POETS'  COUNTRY 

But  these  with  slower  steps  direct  their  way, 
Where  Brent's  cool  waves  in  limpid  currents  stray ; 
While  yonder  few  search  out  some  cool  retreat, 
And  arbours  shade  them  from  the  summer's  heat. 


It  is  a  pretty  picture,  but  Art  and  Nature  are  at 
strife.  The  Brent,  like  Byron,  is  a  "  child  of  clay,"  and 
could  not  have  run  "  in  limpid  currents  "  a  hundred  or  a 
thousand  years  ago.  Alders  and  hawthorn  meet  across 
its  crumbling  mudbanks,  and  the  kingfisher  flits  and 
gleams  beneath  the  overhanging  branches.  The  Brent 
has  its  charms,  and  merits  the  sacred  bard,  but  its 
waters,  whether  they  glide  or  creep  or  swirl,  are  not 
limpid  save  by  poetic  courtesy.  Byron  belongs  to 
Harrow.  He  carved  the  letters  of  his  name  on  the 
walls  of  one  of  the  class-rooms,  where  they  remain  unto 
this  day.  He  is  the  patron  saint,  or  watery  god,  of 
Duck  Pool,  the  "  Ducker  "  of  a  generation  that  "  takes 
up  "  but  does  not  read  Childe  Harold.  But  the  scenery 
of  Middlesex  did  not  and  could  not  mould  or  sway  the 
fashioning  of  his  verse.  When  he  turned  for  a  last 
look  at  the  verdant  hill,  "  its  spire  was  seen  through  a 
tear  "  ;  and  at  the  close  of  his  life  he  selected  a  spot  in 
Harrow  for  the  last  resting-place  of  his  five-year-old 
Allegra,  "  sole  daughter  "  of  an  exile's  hearth. 

In  October  1805  Byron  went  into  residence  at 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge.  His  rooms  were  in 
Neville's  Court,  and,  the  legend  notwithstanding,  he 
was  their  sole  tenant.  His  Lordship's  bear  "  kept " 
out  of  college,  at  a  livery  stable,  perhaps  at  Fordham's 


BYRON  53 

mews.  So,  at  least,  I  was  informed  by  the  son  of  a 
contemporary  and  eye-witness,  who  more  than  once 
"saw  plain"  both  Byron  and  the  bear.  Cambridge 
suggested  rather  than  inspired  some  dreary  stanzas 
entitled  G-ranta,  A  Medley,  and  some  lines  in  Hints 
from  Horace,  but  said  nothing  that  was  good  or 
beautiful  to  Byron.  The  best  use  which  he  made  of 
his  time  was  "  to  dive  for  and  pick  up  plates,  eggs,  and 
even  shillings."  "  I  remember,"  he  says,  "...  there 
was  a  stump  of  a  tree  in  the  bed  of  the  river  in  a  spot 
round  which  I  used  to  cling,  and  *  wonder  how  the 
devil  I  came  there.'"  The  spot,  a  bend  of  the  Cam,  is 
still  known  as  Byron's  Pool.  One  year,  1807,  he  cut 
all  his  terms  and  passed  his  time  in  lodgings  in  London, 
or  at  his  mother's  house  at  Southwell.  Burgage  Manor, 
which  looks  on  Southwell  Green,  is  an  old-fashioned 
villa,  not  to  say  mansion,  with  a  portico  in  front.  It 
has  an  air  of  dignified  comfort  and  unimpeachable 
gentility.  Byron  found  it  dull,  and  it  was  partly  for 
this  reason  that  whilst  he  was  at  Southwell  he  collected 
his  poems,  wrote  fresh  ones,  and  sent  them  to  Newark 
to  be  printed. 

His  first  venture  was  a  small  quarto  which  he 
named  Fugitive  Pieces.  The  title  is  ominous,  for  the 
little  volume  contained  one  poem  too  many,  and,  with 
the  exception  of  two  or  three  copies,  the  entire  issue 
was  committed  to  the  flames.  Poems  on  Various 

L 

Occasions  sprang  as  it  were  from  the  ashes  of  Fugitive 
Pieces,  and  as  many  praised  and  no  one  wanted  to  burn 


54  POETS'  COUNTRY 

them,  he  boldly  "commenced  author,"  and  published 
Hours  of  Idleness.  In  whatever  ways  those  hours 
were  spent,  it  was  not  in  the  presence  or  service  of 
Nature.  Of  Mrs.  Byron's  scandal-loving  neighbours, 
of  their  daughters,  or,  possibly,  their  maid-servants, 
Emmas,  arid  Lesbias,  and  Carolines,  we  hear  enough  and 
too  much  ;  but  to  Southwell  itself,  a  pleasant  place  "  on 
a  rising  ground  in  the  midst  of  an  amphitheatre  of 
hills,"  he  alludes  but  once,  in  a  single  stanza  of  the 
Adieu,  a  poem  "written  under  the  impression  the 
author  would  soon  die  "  : — 

Fields,  which  surround  yon  rustic  cot, 

While  yet  I  linger  here, 
Adieu !  you  are  not  now  forgot, 

To  retrospection  dear. 
Streamlet !  along  whose  rippling  surge 
My  youthful  limbs  were  wont  to  urge, 

At  noontide  heat,  their  pliant  course ; 
Plunging  with  ardour  from  the  shore, 
Thy  springs  will  lave  these  limbs  no  more, 

Deprived  of  active  force. 

The  "  rustic  cot "  may  possibly  have  been  Mrs.  Pigot's 
cottage,  as  I  have  elsewhere  maintained,  but  it  could 
not  have  been  Mrs.  Pigot's  house  on  Southwell  Green, 
which  was  not  a  "  cot "  or  by  any  means  rustic.  It  is 
a  deal  likelier  that  Emma  or  Caroline,  or  a  rustic 
Mary,  grew  beside  that  door. 

In  April  1808,  before  he  had  attained  his  majority, 
he  regained  possession  of  Newstead  Abbey,  and  in 
the  following  autumn  he  went  into  residence.  He 


GARDEN   OF   NEWSTEAD 

Monument  to  Byron's  Newfoundland  Dog  Boatswain. 

INSCRIPTION 

To  mark  a  Friend's  remains  these  stones  arise  ; 
I  never  knew  but  one— and  here  he  lies. 

October  30,  1808. 


•  :  \inolfi 


BYRON  55 

must  have  been  familiar  with  every  nook  and  corner  of 
his  heritage,  for  he  had  often  stayed  at  Newstead 
as  the  guest  of  his  tenant,  Lord  Grey  de  Ruthyn  ;  but 
at  last  he  had  come  to  his  own,  a  poor  thing,  and  yet  a 
great  thing,  and  his  very  own.  Ten  years  had  elapsed 
since  his  predecessor,  the  "  Wicked  Lord,"  had  breathed 
his  last  in  the  Prior's  Lodgings,  the  one  set  of  apartments 
which  time  and  the  weather  and  the  bailiffs  had  left 
habitable.  The  first  stanza  of  one  of  his  first  poems 
(1803),  printed  on  the  first  page  of  Fugitive  Pieces — 
"On  leaving  N-st-d" — is  a  lamentation  over  fallen 
greatness : — 

Through  the  cracks  in  those  battlements  loud  the  winds  whistle, 

For  the  hall  of  my  fathers  is  gone  to  decay  ; 
And  in  yon  once  gay  garden  the  hemlock  and  thistle 

Have  chok'd  up  the  rose,  which  once  bloomed  in  the  way. 

Again,  in  the  Elegy  on  Newstead  Abbey,  which  was 
written  three  years  later,  in  1806,  he  apostrophised  the 
"  hall  of  his  fathers  "  as  "  Newstead's  fast  falling,  once 
resplendent  dome  ! "  The  "  holy  and  beautiful  house," 
which  the  Black  Canons  had  dedicated  to  God  and  the 
Virgin,  which  his  ancestor  "  little  Sir  John  Byron  with 
the  great  Beard  "  and  his  descendants  had  converted  into 
a  baronial  mansion,  was  a  dwelling-place  for  the  owls 
and  the  bats.  Something  must  have  been  done  to 
make  it  habitable,  or  it  could  not  have  been  let,  and 
well  let  (1803-1808),  as  a  shooting-box  to  Lord  Grey 
de  Ruthyn,  but  when  it  was  handed  over  to  Byron,  he 
was  forced  to  spend  more  money  than  he  could  afford 


56  POETS'  COUNTRY 

in  repairing  and  re-furnishing  some  of  the  smaller  rooms 
for  himself  and  his  mother.  A  year  later,  when  Childe 
Harold  and  his  "  fellow  Bacchanals "  masqueraded  as 
Abbot  and  monks,  and  skylarked  and  "buffooned  all 
round  the  house,"  neglect  and  decay  still  reigned 
supreme.  The  glory  had  departed,  only  the  majesty 
and  beauty  remained. 

Newstead  Abbey  was  built  in  the  form  of  a  hollow 
square.  Flanking  the  hollow  are  cloisters  supporting, 
on  three  sides,  a  range  of  corridors,  once  the  cells  of  the 
monks,  and  on  the  fourth  side  is  a  library  built  or 
re-built  in  the  sixteenth  century.  The  hollow,  or  inner 
square,  is  a  grassy  quadrangle,  and  in  the  centre  of  the 
quadrangle  stands  a  Gothic  fountain,  with  a  double 
ring  or  frill  of  gargoyles.  If  you  stand  by  the  fountain 
to  examine  the  gargoyles,  you  look  up  to  the  windows 
of  the  corridors  and  library,  and  above  the  north-west 
corner  of  the  cloisters  you  catch  sight  of  the  gable  and 
crockets  of  the  west  front  of  the  Priory  Chapel.  In 
Byron's  day  the  fountain  stood  in  front  of  the  house, 
but  Colonel  Wildman,  who  purchased  the  Abbey  in 
1817,  restored  it  to  its  proper  place,  and  Byron, 
in  Don  Juan  (Canto  xiii.  St.  Ixv.,  February  1820) 
writes  accordingly : — 

Amidst  the  court  a  Gothic  fountain  played, 

Symmetrical,  but  decked  with  carvings  quaint — 

Strange  faces,  like  to  men  in  masquerade, 
And  here  perhaps  a  monster,  there  a  saint. 

Byron  must  have  loved  those  gargoyles,  and,  it  may  be, 


BYRON  57 

made  "  strange  faces "  like  them  for  his  own  and  his 
friends'  amusement. 

The  ground  floor  of  the  west  front  of  the  Abbey — 
which  is  the  front  of  the  house — consists  of  an  entrance 
hall,  approached  by  a  flight  of  stone  steps,  and  a  vaulted 
chamber  known  as  the  Monks'  Parlour.  Above  are  the 
Guests'  Refectory,  or  Banqueting  Hall,  and  an  inner 
room  where  the  Prior  dined  by  himself,  or  entertained 
his  royal  guests.  A  corkscrew  staircase  ascends  from 
the  level  of  the  Prior's  Parlour  to  these  upper  rooms 
above,  which  Byron  furnished  for  his  own  use — a  bed- 
room and  a  dressing-room  and  a  room  for  his  page-in- 
waiting. 

These  rooms  are  unchanged.  The  four-post  bed- 
stead, the  four  corners  decorated  with  a  baron's  coronet, 
is  hung  with  its  original  Chinese-pattern  chintz  curtains. 
The  washstand  still  holds  the  Byronic  jugs  and  basins. 
The  chests  of  drawers  with  "  elliptic  fronts  "  are  of  the 
finest  Spanish  mahogany.  Lovers  of  old  furniture 
would  count  them  precious  apart  from  their  associations. 
Portraits  of  Joe  Murray,  an  old  retainer  of  the  old 
Lord's,  of  Gentleman  Jackson,  his  "corporeal  pastor 
and  master,"  and  a  set  of  coloured  engravings  of  Harrow 
and  Cambridge  still  hang  on  the  walls.  Here  or 
nowhere  is  a  poet's  home.  The  windows  of  the  bed- 
room look  west,  and  command  a  view  of  "the  lucid 
lake"  and  the  "deep  cascade."  How  often  must  he 
have  looked  out  from  these  windows,  when  the  lake 
was  a  sheet  of  silver  "  in  the  noontide  of  the  moon  " ; 


58  POET'S  COUNTRY 

or,  when  the  wind  was  "winged  from  one  point  of 
heaven,"  have  listened  to  that  dolorous  wail,  "  the  dying 
accent  driven  through  the  huge  Arch  !  " 

Here,  too,  or  hereabouts,  in  one  of  these  three 
rooms,  or  to  and  fro  between  the  great  dining-hall  and 
the  Prior's  Parlour,  was  the  chosen  haunt  of  the  Black 
Friar  who  did  not  appear  to  Don  Juan.  And  still  he 
walks,  if  of  late  years  the  electric  light  has  not  put 
him  out.  Touch  a  button  and  you  lay  a  ghost ! 

On  the  farther  side  of  the  quadrangle  facing  the 
east  are  the  Prior's  Lodgings,  the  Orangery,  once  the 
Chapter -House,  and  the  "slype"  or  passage  between 
church  and  Chapter- House  (Byron  calls  it  the  "ex- 
quisite small  chapel"),  and,  above,  in  the  upper  story, 
range  the  state  bedrooms,  named  after  their  royal 
occupants,  Edward  III.,  Henry  VII.,  and  Charles  II. 
The  Prior  and  Canons  held  their  land  on  condition  that 
the  King  could  command  free  quarters  at  the  Abbey, 
and  it  is  said  the  right  is  still  in  force.  Fronting  the 
south  is  the  Xenodochium,  or  Guesten  Hall,  and,  above, 
the  Guests'  Refectory,  now  the  Grand  Drawing-Room. 
On  the  north  side,  below,  are  cloisters,  and,  above,  the 
Library.  These  chambers  and  halls  and  galleries  make 
up  the  square  block  of  monastic  buildings,  and;  in 
Byron's  phrase,  "  for  all  the  rest  vide  Guidebook."  But 
the  main  feature  of  the  exterior  of  the  Abbey  which 
distinguishes  it  from  other  great  houses  or  palaces, 
save,  perhaps,  Holyrood,  is  the  west  front  of  the 
Priory  Church,  which  is  flush  with  the  west  front  of  the 


BYRON  59 

mansion.  It  is  a  stone  screen,  that  and  nothing  more, 
for  aisles  and  chancel  have  been  laid  low  even  to  the 
ground ;  but,  in  itself,  it  is  perfect  and  "  beautiful 
exceedingly."  Save  for  the  hollow  arch,  a  "mighty 
window,"  shorn  of  its  tracery,  and  for  a  row  of  six 
lancet  windows  above,  the  wall  is  solid.  On  either 
side  of  the  arch  are  "  two  blank  windows  overlaid  with 
delicate  Gothic  mouldings  carved  in  relief  on  the  solid 
ashlar,"  and,  at  either  extremity  of  the  front,  are 
buttresses  with  canopied  niches,  which  once  contained 
the  statues  of  apostles  or  saints.  Over  the  west  door 
is  a  much-worn  figure  of  the  Saviour,  and,  high  above 
the  lancet  windows,  is  a  statuette  of  the  Crowned 
Virgin,  with  the  Babe  in  her  arms,  which,  as  it  were 
by  a  miracle,  escaped  the  shot  and  cannon-balls  of 
Cromwell's  troops.  Byron  half  believed  that  it  was  a 
miracle : — 

But  in  a  higher  niche,  alone,  but  crowned, 
The  Virgin-Mother  of  the  God-born  Child, 

With  her  Son  in  her  blessed  arms,  looked  round, 

Spared  by  some  chance  where  all  beside  was  spoiled. 

Behind  the  ivied  screen  is  a  sward  of  close-mown 
grass,  and  at  the  eastern  extremity,  where  once  the 
High  Altar  stood,  is  the  urn-crowned  sepulchral  monu- 
ment of  Byron's  dog  "  Boatswain."  It  bears  the  well- 
known  "  Inscription  to  a  Newfoundland  Dog."  When 
his  mother  died  in  August  1811,  he  made  a  will  and 
left  directions  that  his  body  was  to  be  buried  in  the 
vault  beneath  this  monument,  and  that  his  dog  was 


60  POETS'  COUNTRY 

"not  to  be  removed  from  the  said  vault."  But  the 
only  persons  or  things  which  lie  buried  at  Newstead 
are  the  monks  and  Boatswain,  and,  somewhere,  in 
some  secret  place,  the  famous  "cup  formed  from  a 
skull"! 

The  Abbey  lies  in  the  midst  of  a  fair  domain.  The 
grant  of  lands  which  Henry  II.  assigned  to  the  Black 
Canons,  the  Novus  Locus  or  New  Stede,  or  station, 
embraced  the  upper  waters  of  the  Leem,  which  rises 
in  Sherwood  Forest  and  falls  into  the  Trent  at 
Nottingham.  To  work  their  mills  and  to  turn  marsh- 
land into  pasturage  the  monks  dammed  the  stream 
and  constructed  a  chain  of  lakes.  One  of  the  lakes, 
Byron's  "lucid  lake,"  lies  above  the  Abbey,  to  the 
north-west.  The  "cascade"  flows  over  and  under 
a  sluice  of  stone -work  into  the  second  lake,  which 
borders  the  garden  and  runs  almost  parallel  with 
the  south  front  of  the  Abbey.  The  oak  tree  which 
Byron  planted  in  1806  stands  about  half-way  between 
the  edge  of  this  lake  and  the  house.  A  third  lake  lies 
about  half  a  mile  to  the  south-east.  It  is  surrounded 
with  woods  and  overlooked  by  a  cairn  of  huge  boulders 
of  plum -pudding  stone.  There  is  a  tale  that  the 
"wicked  Lord"  built  the  cairn  of  malice  prepense, 
"  expecting  and  hoping  "  that  a  day  would  come  when 
he  would  open  the  sluice-gates,  mount  his  belvidere 
and  watch  the  devastation  as  the  waters  deluged  the 
country-side.  It  is  an  eerie  spot,  haunted  by  the  shapes 
and  shadows  of  "  old  unhappy  far-off  things."  If  Byron 


THE   LAKE   AT  NEWSTEAD 

Before  the  mansion  lay  a  lucid  Lake, 

Broad  as  transparent,  deep  and  freshly  fed 
By  a  river,  which  its  softened  way  did  make 

In  currents  through  the  calmer  water  spread 
Around  ;  the  wild  fowl  nestled  in  the  brake 

And  sedges,  brooding  in  their  liquid  bed  : 
The  woods  sloped  downwards  to  its  brink  and  stood 

With  their  green  faces  fixed  upon  the  flood. 

Don  Juan,  c.  xiii.  st.  Ivii. — BYRON. 

The  upper  or  '  stable '  lake  lies  a  little  to  the  north-west 
of  the  Abbey.  "The  forts  upon  the  lake  (built  by  the 
fifth  Lord  Byron)  were  designed  to  give  a  naval  appearance 
to  the  waters." 


BYRON  61 

wandered  by  that  "lonely  tide,"  or  climbed  the  evil- 
looking  watch-tower,  he  kept  his  thoughts  to  himself. 
It  may  be  that  before  the  trees  were  planted  on  the 
margin  of  the  lake  there  was  no  cover  for  "light- 
loathing  demons,"  or  for  pheasants. 

At  a  half  right  angle  to  the  chain  of  lakes  there  is 
a  chain  of  ponds — Forest  Pond  to  the  north  of  the 
Priory  Church,  the  square  "Eagle"  Pond,  and  the 
Monks'  stew -pond,  bordered  with  immemorial  yews, 
which  stretch  from  side  to  side,  and  leave  but  a  narrow 
strip  of  sullen  water  for  "  the  full-orbed  moon  "  to  turn 
into  a  line  of  light  when  she  pierces  the  impending 
branches.  Close  by  is  St.  Mary's  well,  a  jet  of  water 
which  shoots  out  its  "  tiny  cone  of  sand  "  with  "  sound- 
less dance."  It  is  hardly  worth  while  to  labour  the 
point  that  Newstead  Abbey  is  a  romantic  spot,  and 
that  Byron  was  a  romantic  poet,  or,  as  Goethe  would 
have  it,  the  Spirit  of  Romance  incarnate. 

In  the  late  autumn  of  1814  Byron  paid  his  last  visit 
to  Newstead,  and  in  the  spring  of  1816  he  left  England 
for  the  Continent.  He  had  but  eight  years  to  live,  and 
during  those  eight  years  he  was  master  or  tenant  of  at 
least  eight  dwelling-places.  But  their  reckoning  and 
presentment  are  "  matter  for  another  tale."  Home  he 
had  none.  Driven  by  pressure  from  without  or  by 
inward  restlessness  he  passed  from  land  to  land,  from 
city  to  city,  still  leaving  behind  him  the  tradition  and 
memories  of  his  sojourn.  He  had  been,  as  he  after- 
wards professed,  a  lover  of  mountains  from  his  child- 


62  POETS'  COUNTRY 

hood.  "  Chimariot's  dusky  amphitheatre,"  and  Mount 
Tomaros,  Parnassus,  and  Ida,  had  brought  back  the 
sacred  memories  of  Colbleen  and  of  Loch-na-gar ;  and 
now,  in  the  first  months  of  his  life-long  exile,  he  lifted  up 
his  eyes  to  the  majesty  and  glory  of  Nature,  in  the  vain 
hope  that  he  might  forget  himself  and  find  an  antidote 
to  remorse.  It  is  true  that  Shelley  "  dosed  "  Byron  with 
Wordsworth,  and  that  the  latter  half  of  the  Third  Canto 
of  Childe  Harold,  the  first  two  Acts  of  Manfred  and 
the  Prisoner  of  Chillon,  and  the  Chillon  Poems,  which 
were  written  during  a  four  months'  residence  at  the 
Villa  Diodati,  on  the  southern  shore  of  the  Lake  of 
Geneva,  bear  traces  of  a  vicarious  inspiration.  It  is 
true  that,  here  and  there,  in  the  turn  of  a  phrase,  and, 
more  than  this,  in  the  formal  recitation  of  a  kind  of 
natural  creed,  Byron  shows  that  he  had  come  under  a 
new  influence  which  he  could  not  resist ;  but  the 
result,  the  Nature -poetry  which  was  the  outcome 
of  this  strange  alliance  or  discipleship,  was  a  new 
development.  Take,  for  instance,  the  famous  Words- 
worthian  stanza  (Ixxii.)  of  the  Third  Canto  of  Childe 
Harold : — 

I  live  not  in  myself,  but  I  become 
Portion  of  that  around  me ;  and  to  me 
High  mountains  are  a  feeling,  but  the  hum 
Of  human  cities  torture  :  I  can  see 
Nothing  to  loathe  in  Nature,  save  to  be 
A  link  reluctant  in  a  fleshly  chain, 
Classed  among  creatures,  when  the  soul  can  flee, 
And  with  the  sky,  the  peak,  the  heaving  plain 
Of  ocean,  or  the  stars,  mingle,  and  not  in  vain. 


BYRON  63 

Or  take  this  record  of  a  poetic  childhood  (Manfred, 
Act  ii.  Scene  ii.  11.  62-73) : — 

My  joy  was  in  the  wilderness, — to  breathe 

The  difficult  air  of  the  iced  mountain's  top, 

Where  the  birds  dare  not  build,  nor  insect's  wing 

Flit  o'er  the  herbless  granite  ;  or  to  plunge 

Into  the  torrent,  and  to  roll  along 

On  the  swift  whirl  of  the  new  breaking  wave  .  .  . 

In  these  my  early  strength  exulted  ;  or 

To  follow  through  the  night  the  moving  moon, 

The  stars  and  their  development ;  .  .  . 

Or  to  look,  list'ning,  on  the  scatter'd  leaves, 

While  Autumn  winds  were  at  their  evening  song. 

These  were  my  pastimes,  and  to  be  alone. 

Byron  turns  and  returns  to  Nature,  not  with  a  "  wise 
passiveness"  to  receive  what  Nature  alone  can  give, 
and  so  to  understand  and  love  humanity  the  more,  but 
he  flies  to  her  in  wrath  and  anguish,  as  to  a  partisan 
and  an  ally,  a  sympathiser  in  his  revolt  against  the 
world.  Nature  stirred  him  to  the  depths  and  awoke 
the  passion  which  was  the  "  very  pulse  of  the  machine," 
the  life-spring  of  his  poetry.  It  is  seldom  that  he  looks 
close  enough  at  natural  objects  to  attain  to  nicety  or 
subtlety  of  delineation.  He  is  happiest  in  the  descrip- 
tion of  striking  and  peculiar  effects,  such  as  the  Lauter- 
brunnen  "  curving  over  the  rock  like  the  tail  of  a  white 
horse  streaming  on  the  wind";  or  the  glacier,  like  "a 
frozen  hurricane  "  ;  or  "  whole  woods  of  feathered  pines 
ALL  WITHERED  " — word-pictures  which  he  noted  in  his 
journal  and  reproduced  in  Manfred  \  or  that  "illustra- 


64  POETS'  COUNTRY 

tion  "  of  "  Nemi  navelled  in  the  woody  hills,"  its  basin 
the  crater  of  an  extinct  volcano  : — 

The  oval  mirror  of  thy  glassy  lake ; 
And  calm  as  cherished  hate,  its  surface  wears 
A  deep  cold  settled  aspect  nought  can  shake, 
All  coiled  into  itself  and  round,  as  sleeps  the  snake. 

Byron  was  indeed,  as  he  writes,  "  a  lover  of  Nature, 
an  admirer  of  Beauty  "  in  Nature,  but,  for  the  most  part, 
it  is  some  great  thing  which  sends  him  into  song,  such 
as  the  sunset  commingling  with  the  moonrise  which 

Streams  along  the  Alpine  heights 
Of  blue  Friuli's  mountains, 

and  deep -dyes  the  Brenta  with  "the  odorous  purple 
of  a  new-born  rose  "  ;  or  the 

Sweet  hour  of  twilight ! — in  the  solitude 

Of  the  pine  forest,  and  the  silent  shore 
Which  bounds  Ravenna's  immemorial  wood. 

Nature  speaks  to  him  not  always  "  comfortably,"  but 
with  an  answering  echo  to  the  tumult  and  the  passion 
that  were  at  work  within.  But  he  had,  too,  another 
"soul  side." 

Browning  says  that  every  artist,  painter,  or  poet 
seeks  to  indulge  his  genius  by  sometimes  going  out 
of  himself,  by  speaking  in  a  language  not  his  own,  in 
the  fashion  of  another  art : — 

He  fain  would  paint  a  picture, 
Put  to  proof  art  alien  to  the  artist. 

There   is   a  ballad   of   the  violet  which    serves   as   a 


BYRON'S   "TOMB"    AT    HARROW 

There  is  a  tomb  in  Harrow  Churchyard  where  Byron 
"  used  to  sit  for  hours  and  hours  when  a  boy." 

Where  now  alone  I  muse,  who  oft  have  trod, 
With  those  I  loved,  thy  soft  and  verdant  sod. 

BYRON. 


BYRON  65 

kind  of  epilogue  to  that  "  Faustish  kind  of  drama,"  The 
Deformed  Transformed,  which  Byron  wrote  at  Pisa  in 
the  early  summer  of  1822.  The  violet  is  of  Italian 
growth,  but  "her  dewy  eye  of  blue"  woke  memories 
of  "  the  North  and  Nature  "  : — 

The  spring  is  come ;  the  violet's  gone, 

The  first-born  child  of  the  early  sun  : 

With  us  she  is  but  a  winter's  flower, 

The  snow  on  the  hills  cannot  blast  her  bower, 

And  she  lifts  up  her  dewy  eye  of  blue 

To  the  youngest  sky  of  the  self-same  hue. 

And  when  the  spring  comes  with  her  host 
Of  flowers,  that  flower  beloved  the  most 
Shrinks  from  the  crowd  that  may  confuse 
Her  heavenly  odour  and  virgin  hues. 

Pluck  the  others,  but  still  remember 

Their  herald  out  of  dim  December — 

The  morning  star  of  all  the  flowers, 

The  pledge  of  daylight's  lengthened  hours ; 

Nor,  midst  the  roses,  e'er  forget 

The  virgin,  virgin  Violet. 


S.  T.  COLERIDGE 

1772-1834 

COLERIDGE  was  country-born,  but  town-bred.  Nature 
in  the  sense  of  the  country — the  country  which,  accord- 
ing to  Varro  (On  Things  Rustic]  and  to  Cowper  is 
emphatically  if  not  exclusively  divine,  affected  him  with 
the  charm  of  novelty.  He  falls  in  love  with  it  as  with 
something  outside  himself,  which  is  not  familiar  to 
him,  and  which  he  does  not  take  for  granted  as  necessarily 
and  naturally  lovable.  In  the  five-and-twenty  poems 
written  at  Christ's  Hospital,  the  genuine  product  of  his 
boyish  Muse,  there  is  but  one  allusion  to  his  birthplace, 
one  single  confession  of  love  for  or  delight  in  wood  or 
stream  or  field.  He  was  reared 

In  the  great  city,  pent  'mid  cloisters  dim, 
And  saw  nought  lovely  but  the  sky  and  stars  ; 

and  from  the  sky  and  stars  he  received  the  first  impulse 
to  translate  the  language  of  Nature  into  the  language 
of  Poetry.  In  the  Sonnet  To  the  Autumnal  Moo?i, 
written  at  the  close  of  his  sixteenth  year,  he  paints  as 
vividly  and  as  truthfully  as  words  can  paint  one  of  those 

66 


COLERIDGE'S  COTTAGE,  NETHER  STOWEY 

Coleridge's  cottage,  Nether  Stowey,  Somerset,  in  which 
the  Ancient  Mariner,  Christabel,  and  other  poems  were 
written,  was  often  visited  by  Wordsworth,  Charles  Lamb, 
and  Southey. 

And  now,  beloved  Stowey  !  I  behold 

Thy  church-tower,  and,  methinks,  the  four  huge  elms 

Clustering,  which  mark  the  mansion  of  my  friend  ; 

And  close  behind  them,  hidden  from  my  view, 

Is  my  own  lowly  cottage,  where  my  babe 

And  my  babe's  mother  dwell  in  peace  !     With  light 

And  quickened  footsteps  thitherward  I  tend. 

Fears  in  Solitude — COLERIDGE. 


t  YFP 


COLERIDGE  67 

moonscapes  which  swam  into  his  ken,  as  he  lay  on  "  the 
leaded  roof  of  that  wide  edifice,  his  school  and  home  "  : — 

Mild  Splendour  of  the  various- vested  Night ! 
Mother  of  wildly-working  visions  !  hail ! 
I  watch  thy  gliding,  while  with  watery  light 
Thy  weak  eye  glimmers  through  a  fleecy  veil ; 
And  when  thou  lovest  thy  pale  orb  to  shroud 
Behind  the  gather'd  blackness  lost  on  high ; 
And  when  thou  dartest  from  the  wind-rent  cloud 
Thy  placid  lightning  o'er  the  awaken'd  sky. 

Two  years  later  he  addressed  a  sonnet  to  "  his  earliest 
affection,  the  evening  star."  It  was  written,  he  tells  us, 
"as  I  was  returning  from  the  New  River,  and  it  looked 
newly-bathed  as  well  as  I." 

O  meek  attendant  of  Sol's  setting  blaze, 

I  hail,  sweet  Star,  thy  chaste  effulgent  glow  ; 

On  thee  full  oft  with  fixed  eye  I  gaze, 
Till  I,  methinks,  all  spirit  seem  to  grow. 

O  first  and  fairest  of  the  starry  choir, 

O  loveliest  'mid  the  daughters  of  the  Night,  etc. 

The  passion,  the  joy  in  this  "thing  of  beauty"  bursts 
through  and  escapes  from  the  hackneyed  phraseology. 
He  is  enamoured  less  of  the  "  maid  I  love  "  than  of  the 
"  Star  benign,"  which  suggests  and  symbolises  her  gentle 
brilliance.  Again,  in  Genevieve,  written,  perhaps,  in 
1789,  he  compares  the  "  maiden's  eye  "  to  the  "  star  of 
eve,"  and  in  Lines  to  a  Young  Lady,  a  Cambridge 
poem,  in  dwelling  on  his  "  early  youth  "  he  tells  us  that 

of  Sorrow  would  I  sing. 
Aye  as  the  star  of  evening  flung  its  beam 
In  broken  radiance  on  the  wavy  stream — 


68  POETS'  COUNTRY 

the  "  wavy  stream  "  being  the  Thames  at  Greenwich, 
or  as  looked  down  upon  from  old  London  Bridge. 
Nature  was  his  teacher,  but  it  was  Nature  seated 
in  her  heavenly,  her  "silver  chair,"  not  Nature  as 
Village  Schoolmistress,  who  set  him  his  earliest 
lessons. 

His  first  acquaintance  with  rustic  things  is  revealed 
in  Life,  a  sonnet  written  in  September  1789,  after  he 
had  revisited  Ottery  St.  Mary,  to  take  a  last  farewell  of 
his  sister  Nancy,  who  was  dying  of  consumption.  On 
the  road  homeward  to  Axminster  and  London,  as  he 
turned  off  the  cross-road  from  Ottery,  he  is  roused  from 
his  melancholy  forebodings  by  the  beauty  of  "the 
glorious  prospect "  : — 

At  every  step  it  widen'd  to  my  sight, 

Wood,  Meadow,  verdant  Hill,  and  dreary  Steep, 

Following  in  quick  succession  of  delight, — 
Till  all — at  once — did  my  eye  ravish'd  sweep ! 

This  is  but  a  profession,  or,  rather,  an  exclamation  of 
delight,  an  attempt  to  catalogue  the  features  of  the 
landscape.  Afterwards,  when  many  revisitings  had 
blended  the  newer  impressions  with  the  recollections  of 
his  childhood,  he  painted  one  simple  scene,  as  it  fixed 
itself  on  the  eye  of  a  poet : — 

Dear  native  Brook !  wild  streamlet  of  the  West ! 
How  many  various-fated  years  have  past, 
What  happy  and  what  mournful  houi's,  since  last 
I  skimmed  the  smooth  thin  stone  along  thy  breast, 
Numbering  its  light  leaps  !     Yet  so  deep  imprest 


COLERIDGE  69 

Sink  the  sweet  scenes  of  childhood,  that  mine  eyes 

I  never  shut  amid  the  sunny  ray, 
But  straight  with  all  their  tints  thy  waters  rise, 

Thy  crossing  plank,  thy  marge  with  willows  grey, 
And  bedded  sand  that  vein'd  with  various  dyes 
Gleam'd  through  thy  bright  transparence,  etc. 

The  lines  which  form  part  of  a  Sonnet  to  the  River 
Otter  may  be  assigned  to  the  summer  of  1793,  but 
the  description  of  "  Otter's  sleep-persuading  stream,"  in 
the  Songs  of  the  Pixies  (1793),  is  less  exact  and 
less  original.  It  is  only  here  and  there  in  the  early 
poems  published  in  1796  and  1797  that  we  have 
"  glimpses  that  would  make  us  less  forlorn,"  of  wood  or 
stream,  or  of  the  blessed  fields.  He  was  a  dweller  in 
cities,  in  London  or  Cambridge  or  Bristol,  and  only 
now  and  then  on  a  summer  excursion  was  he  face  to  face 
with  the  verities  of  Nature.  For  instance,  in  Lines 
composed  while  climbing  the  Left  Ascent  of  Brockley 
Coomb  (May  1795),  he  breaks  with  conventional  usage 
and  describes  not  what  he  ought  to  have  seen,  but  what 
he  actually  saw  : — 

Up  scour  the  startling  stragglers  of  the  flock 

That  on  green  plots  o'er  precipices  browse : 

From  the  forc'd  fissures  of  the  naked  rock 

The  Yew-tree  bursts  !     Beneath  its  dark  green  boughs 

(Mid  which  the  May-thorn  blends  its  blossoms  white), 

Where  broad  smooth  stones  jut  out  in  mossy  seats, 

I  rest. 

Again,  in  the  lines  On  observing  a  Blossom  on  the 
First  of  February  1796,  his  indictment  of  "This 
dark,  frieze-coated,  hoarse,  teeth- chattering  month  "  is 


70  POETS'  COUNTRY 

engrossed  by  Nature's  pen.  The  poet  was  "  on  tour," 
soliciting  subscriptions  for  his  forthcoming  periodical  The 
Watchman,  and  on  the  top  of  stage-coaches,  and  in  the 
dreary  streets  of  Sheffield  and  of  Nottingham,  he  had 
"  learnt  in  suffering  "  how  and  what  to  "  teach  in  song  "! 
The  two  Clevedon  poems,  The  Eolian  Harp  and 
Reflections  on  having  left  a  Place  of  Retirement,  "the 
prologue  and  epilogue  to  the  honeymoon,"  bespeak 
the  charms  of  rural  retreat,  as  well  as  the  fulfillment  of 
domestic  bliss.  The  vignette  or  aquarelle  : — 

Our  cot,  our  cot  o'ergrown 
With  white-flowered  Jasmin,  and  the  broad-leaved  Myrtle ; 

.  .  .    the  scents 

Snatched  from  yon  bean-field !  and  the  world  so  hush'd ! 
The  stilly  murmur  of  the  distant  sea  ;  — 

or  the  goodly  scenes,  the  reward  of  the  "  perilous  toil " 
of  scaling  a  Somersetshire  down  : 

The  bare  bleak  mountain  speckled  thin  with  sheep ; 
Grey  clouds,  that  shadowing  spot  the  sunny  fields ; 

And  seats,  and  lawns,  the  abbey  and  the  wood, 
And  cots,  and  hamlets,  and  faint  city  spire  ; — 

these  and  other  deliberate  appreciations  of  the 
picturesque  betray  the  strangeness  and  the  astonish- 
ment of  the  discoverer  or  explorer  of  the  unknown. 
Bristowa's  citizen  who  "eyed  our  cottage,"  or  Cottle, 
when  he  "  rode  down  to  pay  his  respects  to  the  newly- 
married  couple,"  would,  an  they  could,  have  indulged 
in  similar  transports.  All  is  true  to  nature,  but  the 


COLERIDGE  71 

enumeration  of  details  and  the  choice  of  details  suggest 
a  certain  inexperience  of  Nature. 

A  minuter  and  more  intimate  appreciation  of  Nature 
is  displayed  in  a  poem  to  Charles  Lloyd  ( To  a  Young 
Friend,  etc.  [?  September  1796]).  He  pictures  him- 
self and  his  young  friend  poetising  on  some  "  mount," 
perhaps  in  Derbyshire,  perhaps  in  dreamland : — 

O  then  'twere  loveliest  sympathy,  to  mark 

The  berries  of  the  half-uprooted  ash 

Dripping  and  bright ;  and  list  the  torrent's  dash, — 

Beneath  the  cypress,  or  the  yew  more  dark, 

Seated  at  ease,  on  some  smooth  mossy  rock,  etc. 

A  month  or  two  later,  when  he  had  reason  to  hope 
that  his  "  crazy  ark  "  would  rest  on  some  "  Ararat "  of 
Somersetshire,  he  tells  Charles  Lloyd's  father  that  the 
last  but  not  the  least  of  the  six  companions  who  would 
form  his  society  would  be  "  Nature  looking  at  me  in  a 
thousand  looks  of  beauty  and  speaking  to  me  in  a 
thousand  melodies  of  love."  He  had  begun  to  set  his 
heart  upon  the  country. 

On  January  1,  1797,  Coleridge  took  up  his  abode 
at  a  little  roadside  cottage  or  hovel  on  the  outskirts  of 
the  market- village  of  Nether  Stowey  in  Somersetshire. 
He  dreamt  of  making  a  substantial  livelihood  by 
"horticulture,"  that  is,  by  cultivating  a  small  garden 
plot  and  orchard  which  lay  at  the  back  of  the  cottage. 
In  the  intervals  of  gardening  he  could  write  for  the 
reviews  and  fulfil  his  mission  as  a  poet.  The  fact  that 
Wordsworth  and  his  sister  had  settled  in  a  farmhouse 


72  POETS'  COUNTRY 

in  a  remote  part  of  Dorsetshire  may  perhaps  have 
suggested  this  escape  from  the  "vast  city,"  but  the 
choice  of  a  cottage  in  Nether  Stowey  was  determined 
by  the  proximity  of  a  "patronal"  friend  and  disciple, 
Tom  Poole.  He  would  rear,  or  in  plain  prose  rent, 

"  a  lowly  shed," 

Beside  one  friend, 
Beneath  the  impervious  covert  of  one  oak. 

Now  it  was  within  the  four  walls  of  this  "  lowly  shed  " 
that  the  greater  part  of  his  great  poems  were  written, 
or,  at  least,  written  down.  A  miserable  cottage  it  was, 
unadorned  by  myrtle,  or  "  window-peeping  rose  " ;  but 
the  garden,  which  contained  a  "jasmin  harbor,"  was  a 
pleasant  place,  from  which  the  grassy  ramparts  of  Stowey 
Castle  and  Dousborough's  "airy  roof"  were  visible. 
There  was  "  a  sweet  sequestered  orchard  plot "  where  the 
poet  and  his  wife  could  sit  and  watch  the  apple  blossoms 

Stirred  by  the  faint  gale  of  departing  May, 
Send  their  loose  blossoms  slanting  o'er  our  heads ! 

In  July  1797  Wordsworth  and  his  sister  Dorothy 
settled  at  Alfoxden,  a  small  country  seat  some  three 
miles  distant  from  Stowey,  which  was  let  furnished 
for  twenty -three  pounds  a  year,  including  rent  and 
taxes.  The  manor-house  is  built  on  a  spur  of  the 
Quantocks,  in  the  midst  of  a  small  deer  park.  The 
front  looks  to  the  south,  "  but  it  is  screened  from  the 
sun  by  a  high  hill.  .  .  .  This  hill  is  ...  scattered 
irregularly  .  .  .  writh  trees  and  topped  with  fern.  .  .  . 
Wherever  we  turn  we  have  woods,  smooth  downs,  and 


COLERIDGE  73 

valleys  with  small  brooks  running  from  them  .  .  .  the 
hills  that  cradle  these  valleys  are  either  covered  with 
fern  and  bilberries  or  oak  woods."  From  the  drive  or 
avenue  which  runs  through  a  wood  to  the  park  and 
house  you  catch  sight  of  the  "shadowy  main  dim- 
tinted,"  the  "  dun  waters  of  the  Severn  sea "  bounded 
by  the  "  pale  outline  of  the  Welsh  mountains." 

The  first-fruits  of  this  second  withdrawal  to  a  "  place 
of  retirement  "was  the  tragedy  of  Osorio,  the  first  draft 
of  Remorse,  which  was  begun  in  the  spring  of  1797, 
before  Wordsworth  came  to  Alfoxden,  and  finished  by 
the  middle  of  October.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  as  the 
drama  proceeds  there  is  an  increasing  tendency  to 
heighten  the  passion  by  an  appeal  to  Nature.  Take, 
for  instance,  this  confession  of  "  natural "  piety  : — 

O  .  .  .  that  they  could  return, 

Those  blessed  days,  that  imitated  heaven, 

When  we  two  wont  to  walk  at  eventide ; 

When  we  saw  nought  but  beauty ;  when  we  heard 

The  voice  of  that  Almighty  One,  who  lov'd  us, 

In  every  gale  that  breath'd,  and  wave  that  murmur'd ! 

Act  iv.  ii.  287-292. 

Or  this  profession  of  "  natural "  faith  : — 

With  other  ministrations  thou,  O  Nature ! 
Healest  thy  wandering  and  distemper'd  child  ! 
Thou  pourest  on  him  thy  soft  influences, 
Thy  sunny  hues,  fair  forms,  and  breathing  sweets ; 
Thy  melodies  of  woods,  and  winds,  and  waters ! 
Till  he  relent,  and  can  no  more  endure 
To  be  a  jarring  and  a  dissonant  thing 
Amid  this  general  dance  and  minstrelsy. 

Act  v.  ii.  126-133. 


74  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Or  take  this  study  in  autumn  foliage.  The  poet 
forgets  that  the  scene  is  laid  on  the  coast  of  Granada, 
and  paints  instead  a  Somersetshire  coomb  when  autumn 
had  begun  to  lay  "  a  fiery  finger  on  the  leaves  "  : — 

The  hanging  woods,  that  touch' d  by  autumn  seem'd 
As  they  were  blossoming  hues  of  fire  and  gold, 
The  hanging  woods,  most  lovely  in  decay. 

Act  v.  i.  39-41. 

Two  or  three  months  before  these  last  Acts  of  Osorio 
were  written,  in  the  lines  entitled  This  Lime -Tree 
Sower  my  Prison,  which  may  be  regarded  as  the 
prelude  to  a  fuller  inspiration,  he  had  given  proof  both 
of  the  will  and  the  power  to  come  to  close  quarters 
with  Nature.  Debarred  from  accompanying  his  friends 
the  Wordsworths  and  Charles  Lamb  in  their  ramble 
"  on  springy  heath  along  the  hill-top  ledge,"  he  is  fain 
to  content  himself  with  the  humbler  beauties  of  "  the 
little  lime-tree  bower,"  Tom  Poole's  garden : — 

Pale  beneath  the  blaze 

Hung  the  transparent  foliage ;  and  I  watched 
Some  broad  and  sunny  leaf,  and  loved  to  see 
The  shadow  of  the  leaf  and  stem  above, 
Dappling  its  sunshine. 

If  this  attitude  of  heart  and  soul  toward  Nature  had 
been  quickened  and  stimulated  by  Wordsworth,  it  was 
Wordsworth  who  diverted  Coleridge  from  the  seen  to 
the  unseen,  from  "  this  fair  earth  and  its  divinities "  to 
the  "goings  on"  of  those  "invisible  natures"  which 
live  and  move  behind  the  veil  of  the  senses.  Following 
metaphorically  and  following  literally  in  Wordsworth's 


THE   GROVE,   HIGHGATE 

Showing  the  house  in  which  Coleridge  lived  during  the 
latter  years  of  his  life,  and  in  which  he  died. 


OF 


J 


COLERIDGE  75 

footsteps,  he  had  begun  to  "  make  studies  "  for  a  poem 
to  be  named  The  Brook.  "I  sought  for  a  subject," 
he  says,  "  that  should  give  equal  room  and  freedom 
for  description,  incident,  and  impassioned  reflections  on 
men,  nature,  and  society.  .  .  .  Such  a  subject  I  con- 
ceived myself  to  have  found  in  a  stream,  traced  from 
its  source  in  the  hills  among  the  yellow-red  moss  and 
conical  glass -shaped  tufts  of  bent  to  the  first  break 
or  fall,  where  its  drops  become  audible,  and  it  begins 
to  form  a  channel,  .  .  .  but  circumstances,  evil  and 
good,  interfered  to  prevent  the  completion  of  the  poem  " 
(Biographia  Literaria,  chap.  x.).  One  circumstance 
may  have  been  Wordsworth's  conviction  that  the 
proper  sphere  of  his  friend's  genius  was  "the  super- 
natural," and  that  he  would  be  tempted  to  substitute 
a  minute  and  elaborate  tabulation  of  scenic  effects  for 
the  creative  work  of  the  imagination.  The  "  Time  and 
Place  "  of  the  great  Stowey  poem,  The  Ancient  Mariner, 
Christabel,  and  Kubla  Khan  are  "  not  from  hence,"  and 
only  here  and  there  and  incidentally  does  the  inspired 
fabulist  betray  the  immediate  source  of  his  word- 
pictures.  One  or  two  instances  must  suffice. 

The  hidden  brook 

That  to  the  sleeping  woods  all  night 
Singeth  a  quiet  tune 

flowed  and  still  flows  through  Holford  Wood,  which  is 
close  to  Alfoxden.  "  The  moss  that  wholly  hides  the 
old  oak  stump  "  ;  the 


76  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Brown  skeletons  of  leaves  that  lag 
My  forest-brook  along, 

and  the  "  Ivy-tod  that  is  heavy  with  snow  "  were  familiar 
objects  of  his  rambles  among  the  "  sloping  coombes  of 
Quantock"  during  the  late  spring  of  1798.  In  the 
First  Part  of  Christabel  there  are  several  of  these 
"  studies "  or  etchings  of  the  sky  by  night  and  of 
woodland  or  roadside  scenery.  There  is,  for  instance, 
"  the  thin  grey  cloud  that  covered  but  not  hid  the  sky," 
the  round  full  moon  which  looked  "both  small  and 
dull,"  and  the  "  one  red  leaf — the  last  of  its  clan,"  which 
danced  like  a  thing  of  life,  as  it  was  blown  hither  and 
thither  by  the  wind.  Are  not  these  things  written  in 
Dorothy  Wordsworth's  Alfoxden  Journal — a  proof,  if 
proof  were  needed,  that  she  "  gave  eyes  "  alike  to  her 
brother  and  her  brother's  friend  ?  Still  more  unmistak- 
able traces  of  Quantock  scenery  may  be  found  in  the 
"  meditative  "  pieces  of  1798,  Fears  in  Solitude,  and  in 
The  Nightingale.  Even  in  France:  an  Ode,  there  is 
a  further  allusion  to  the  "  hanging  woods  "  "  midway  the 
perilous  slope  inclined,"  and  in  the  final  apostrophe  to 
Liberty  he  dwells  fondly  on 

that  sea-cliff's  verge, 

Whose  pines,  scarce  travelled  by  the  breeze  above, 
Had  made  one  murmur  with  the  distant  surge. 

Now  we  know  that  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge 
lived  at  the  foot  of  wooded  hills  and  were  within  easy 
reach  of  "  Kilve's  delightful  shore,"  and  that  day  in 
and  day  out  they  would  climb  by  wooded  ways  to 


COLERIDGE  77 

the  ridge  of  the  Quantocks  or  descend  to  "  a  favourite 
seat  behind  the  bank  on  the  seaside."  Poetry  does  not 
depend  on  these  "  accidents  " — it  is  born  of  the  spirit : 
but  the  perception  and  recognition  of  its  accidents 
make  for  the  understanding  and  realisation  of  poetry. 

In  the  autumn  of  1798  Coleridge  went  to  Germany, 
and  for  the  space  of  two  years  he  wrote  but  little 
original  poetry.  Of  his  ten  months'  sojourn  in  Germany 
the  sole  poetical  record  consists  of  a  description  of  the 
scenery  of  the  Hartz  Forest,  which  forms  part  of 
Lines  written  in  the  Album  at  Elbingerode  : 

Heavily  my  way 

Downward  I  dragged  through  fir-groves  evermore, 
Where  bright  green  moss  heaves  in  sepulchral  forms 
Speckled  with  sunshine ;  and,  but  seldom  heard, 
The  sweet  bird's  song  became  an  hollow  sound ; 
And  the  breeze  murmuring  indivisibly 
Preserved  its  solemn  murmur  most  distinct 
From  many  a  note  of  many  a  waterfall, 
And  the  brook's  chatter ;  'mid  whose  islet-stones 
The  dingy  kidling  with  its  tinkling  bell 
Leaped  frolicsome,  or  old  romantic  goat 
Sat,  his  white  beard  slow  waving. 

A    mountain    excursion    had    roused   the    slumbering 

o 

passion  of  his  Muse. 

The  second  period  of  Coleridge's  poetical  career 
begins  with  the  composition  of  the  Second  Part  of 
Christabel  (September  1800),  and  ends  with  that  cry 
of  despair,  The  Pains  of  Sleep  (September  1803). 
Then,  if  ever,  he  was  a  Lake  Poet.  Of  the  second 
vintage  there  was  but  a  scanty  yield,  and  the  fruit  of 


78  POETS'  COUNTRY 

the  vine  but  seldom  favours  or  betrays  the  soil  and 
aspect  of  the  vineyard.  In  the  Second  Part  of 
Christabel  the  place  names,  Windermere  and  Dungeon 
Ghyll  and  Borrowdale,  give  evidence  of  new  sur- 
roundings, and  towards  the  close  of  The  Picture; 
or,  The  Lover's  Resolution  (1802),  there  is  a  finished 
"  study  "  of  a  "  circular  vale  .  .  .  land-locked,"  which  is 
certainly  somewhere  in  Westmoreland  or  Cumberland, 
and  may  possibly  have  been  suggested  by  Watendlath. 
In  the  Keepsake  (1800)  the  "tedded  hay  and  corn- 
sheaves  in  one  field"  and  an  autumnal  foxglove  are 
characteristic  of  the  Lake  Country,  and  in  A  Strange 
Minstrel,  in  The  Knights'  Tomb,  and  in  the  Thought 
suggested  by  a  View  of  Saddleback — 

On  stern  Blencartha's  perilous  height 
The  winds  are  tyrannous  and  strong,- — 

the  verse,  in  Byron's  phrase,  is  "  a  breather  of  the 
mountain-tops."  But,  for  the  most  part,  in  what  he 
says  and  leaves  unsaid  he  confirms  the  truth  of  his  own 
confession,  in  Dejection :  an  Ode  : — 

I  may  not  hope  from  outward  forms  to  win 

The  passion  and  the  life,  whose  fountains  are  within. 

"Joy"  which  had  wedded  Nature  to  him  had  gone 
beyond  recall,  and  his  marriage  portion,  "  A  new  Earth 
and  a  new  Heaven,"  had  been  taken  from  him  and 
given  to  another.  But  once,  and  that  once  by  the 
aid  of  borrowed  plumage,  does  his  wing  take  flight. 
The  Hymn  before  Sunrise  in  the  Vale  of  Chamouni  is  in 


COLERIDGE  79 

part,  perhaps  a  quarter  of  the  whole,  a  translation  from 
the  German  of  Friederike  Brim,  but  the  remaining  lines, 
which  purport  to  be  descriptive  of  Alpine  scenery,  were 
inspired  by  a  solitary  walk  on  Sea  Fell.  The  critics, 
noticing  the  plagiarism  and  misliking  the  reiterated 
invocation  of  the  Deity, 

God !  let  the  torrents,  like  a  shout  of  nations, 
Answer !  and  let  the  ice-plains  echo,  God ! 

have  written  down  this  triumphant  hymn  of  praise  as 
pompous  and  artificial.  Whether  it  be  pompous  or 
no  is  a  question  of  taste,  but  that  it  was  a  genuine 
and  spontaneous  outburst  of  poetic  enthusiasm  may  be 
demonstrated  by  a  study  of  contemporary  letters  and 
journals.  As  he  was  brought  for  the  first  time  face  to 
face  with  the  majesty  of  Nature,  "  his  heart  grew  hot 
within  him,  the  fire  kindled,  and  he  spake  with  his 
tongue." 

But  little  as  Coleridge  merited  the  disgrace  or 
deserved  the  honour  of  being  nicknamed  a  Lakist,  it 
was  not  from  want  of  physical  activity  or  from  any 
failure  to  perceive  the  charms  and  wonders  of 
mountain  scenery  that  his  Muse  was  silent.  Notebook 
in  hand  he  wandered  far  and  near  over  the  Keswick 
and  Wastwater  mountains,  and  as  he  passed  from  crag 
to  crag  or  "  hunted  the  waterfalls,"  he  jotted  down  in 
pencil  the  minutest  features  of  the  scene.  Often,  too, 
he  noted  the  effects  of  mist  and  sunshine  on  the  hills, 
of  cloud  and  shadow  on  the  Lakes  as  he  sat  in  the 
"  Organ  Room "  at  Greta  Hall.  Here  is  a  typical 


80  POETS'  COUNTRY 

word-picture  of  Lake  scenery.     The  date  is  October 
21,  1803  :— 

A  drizzling  rain.  Heavy  masses  of  shapeless  vapour  upon 
the  mountains  (Oh,  the  perpetual  forms  of  Borrowdale !)  yet  it  is 
no  unbroken  tale  of  dull  sadness.  Slanting  pillars  travel  across 
the  lake  at  long  intervals,  the  vaporous  mass  whitens  in  large 
stains  of  light — on  the  lakeward  ridge  of  that  huge  arm-chair  of 
Lodore  fell  a  gleam  of  softest  light,  that  brought  out  the  rich 
hues  of  the  late  autumn.  .  .  .  Little  woolpacks  of  white  bright 
vapour  rest  on  different  summits  and  declivities.  The  vale  is 
narrowed  by  the  mist  and  cloud,  yet  through  the  wall  of  mist  you 
can  see  into  a  bower  of  sunny  light,  in  Borrowdale ;  the  birds  are 
singing  in  the  tender  rain,  as  if  it  were  the  rain  of  April,  and  the 
decaying  foliage  were  flowers  and  blossoms  (Anima  Poetae,  1895, 
p.  34). 

The  greater  part  of  these  topographical  notes  were, 
no  doubt,  originally  composed  with  a  view  to  writing 
a  Guide-book  to  the  Lake  district,  but  long  after  that 
visionary  scheme  had  been  abandoned  the  habit 
remained  of  confiding  his  impressions  to  his  note-books, 
"  the  confidants  who  have  not  betrayed  me,  the  friends 
whose  silence  is  not  detraction,  and  the  inmates  before 
whom  I  was  not  ashamed  to  complain,  to  yearn,  to 
weep,  and  even  to  pray."  In  April  1804  Coleridge 
left  England  for  a  two  years'  sojourn  on  the  Continent. 
Thenceforth,  until  his  death  in  1834,  he  wrote  but 
little  verse,  and  on  the  rare  occasions  when  the  "  genial 
ray "  returned,  the  inspiration  was  from  within,  and  of 
place,  circumstance,  or  of  communion  with  Nature  there 
is  only  an  occasional  intimation.  But  neither  "  abstruse 
research,"  nor  sickness,  nor  sorrow,  nor  "  the  poisons  of 


The  Quaritock  Hills,  from  Alfoxden  Glen,  with  Dous- 
borough  in  the  distance,  are  described  in  the  lines : — 

But  now  the  gentle  dew-fall  sends  abroad 
The  fruit-like  perfume  of  the  golden  furze  : 
The  light  has  left  the  summit  of  the  hill, 
Though  still  a  sunny  gleam  lies  beautiful, 
Aslant  the  ivied  beacon.     Now  farewell, 
Farewell,  awhile,  O  soft  and  silent  spot ! 
On  the  green  sheep-track,  up  the  heathy  hill, 
Homeward  I  wind  my  way. 

Fears  in  Solitude — COLERIDGE. 


COLERIDGE  81 

self-harm  "  could  make  him  a  stranger  or  an  alien  in  the 
courts  of  Nature.  He  gives  proof  of  this  in  some  stanzas 
entitled  Recollections  of  Love,  which  were  written  on 
revisiting  Nether  Stowey  in  the  summer  of  1807  : — 

Eight  springs  have  flown  since  last  I  lay 
On  seaward  Quantock's  heathy  hills, 
Where  quiet  sounds  from  hidden  rills 

Float  here  and  there,  like  things  astray, 
And  high  o'er  head  the  sky-lark  shrills. 

Or  take  this  glimpse  of  early  morning  on  a  hillside, 
from  Alice  du  Clos,  a  later  poem  of  uncertain  date  : — 

There  stands  the  flow'ring  may-thorn  tree ! 
From  thro'  the  veiling  mist  you  see 

The  black  and  shadowy  stem  ; — 
Smit  by  the  sun  the  mist  in  glee 
Dissolves  to  lightsome  jewelry — 

Each  blossom  hath  its  gem ! 

Or  this  momentary  response  to  the  sweet  influences  of  a 
sunny  day  in  February  1827  : — 

All  Nature  seems  at  work.     Slugs  leave  their  lair — 

The  bees  are  stirring — birds  are  on  the  wing — 

And  Winter,  slumbering  in  the  open  air, 

Wears  on  his  smiling  face  a  dream  of  Spring  ! 

And  I  the  while,  the  sole  unbusy  thing, 

Nor  honey  make,  nor  pair,  nor  build,  nor  sing. 

Work  without  Hope,  from  which  these  lines  are 
taken,  and  the  exquisite  Garden  of  Boccaccio  (sole 
poetic  testimony  of  a  visit  to  Italy)  were  written  in 
Coleridge's  later  days  when  "he  sat  on  the  brow  of 

Highgate  Hill,"  when  Nature  in  her  homelier  or  in  her 

G 


82  POETS'  COUNTRY 

wilder  aspects  was  but  a  memory  of  the  past,  when  it 
sufficed  him  to  pace  slowly  along  Lovers'  Lane,  or 
among  the  trees  in  front  of  "The  Grove,"  or  to  look 
from  his  attic  window  across  Lord  Mansfield's  woods  to 
the  country  beyond.  But  the  day  had  been  when 
Philosophy  had  borne  "no  other  name  but  Poesie," 
and  to  the  last  he  kenned  "  the  banks  where  amaranths 
blow."  Though  he  had  deserted  Nature,  Nature  ne'er 
deserted  him.  Let  him  speak  for  himself : — 

The  love  of  Nature  is  ever  returned  double  to  us,  not  only  the 
delighter  in  our  delight,  but  by  linking  our  sweetest,  but,  of  them- 
selves, perishable  feelings  to  distinct  and  vivid  images.  .  .  .  She 
is  the  preserver,  the  treasurer  of  our  joys.  .  .  .  And  even  when 
all  men  have  seemed  to  desert  us  and  the  friend  of  our  heart  has 
passed  on,  with  one  glance  from  his  "cold  disliking  eye" — yet, 
even  then,  the  blue  heaven  spreads  it  out  and  bends  over  us,  and 
the  little  tree  still  shelters  us  under  its  plumage  as  a  second  cope, 
a  domestic  firmament,  and  the  low  creeping  gale  will  sigh  in  the 
heath-plant,  and  soothe  us  by  sound  of  sympathy  till  the  lulled 
grief  lose  itself  in  fixed  gaze  on  the  purple  heath-blossom,  till  the 
present  beauty  becomes  a  vision  of  memory  (Anima  Poetae,  p. 
246). 


SCOTT 

NOT  less  than  Wordsworth's  the  Muse  of  Scott  is  the 
child  and  lover  of  Nature,  and  "Nature  mourns  her 
worshipper,"  where  "the  sound  of  all  others  most 
delicious  to  his  ear,  the  gentle  ripple  of  Tweed  over 
its  pebbles,"  murmurs  by  Sir  Walter's  tomb  at  Dry- 
burgh.  Scott  has  remarked  in  Rob  Roy  on  the 
personal  feeling  of  affection,  and  almost  of  reverence, 
which  his  countrymen  entertain  for  the  rivers  of  their 
native  land,  like  the  Greeks,  and  a  legend  tells  of  a 
lady  who  loved  Tweed  as  dearly  as  Tyro,  in  Homer, 
loved  Enipeus,  "far  the  fairest  of  all  streams  that 
wander  through  the  world."  Though  born  in  Edin- 
burgh, Scott  was  a  son  of  the  Tweed ;  from  Tweed- 
side,  and  from  the  tributaries  of  the  Tweed,  Ettrick, 
Yarrow,  and  Teviot,  came  the  forefathers  who  be 
queathed  to  him  his  spirit  and  his  memories  of  the 
past.  His  "fancy's  wakening  hour,"  he  says,  was 
passed,  indeed, 

where  no  broad  river  swept  along, 
and 

scarce  a  puny  streamlet's  speed 
Claimed  homage  from  the  shepherd's  reed. 
83 


84  POETS'  COUNTRY 

But  Smailholme  Tower  and  Sandyknowe  farm,  where 
his  fancy  awoke,  were,  at  least,  in  Tweeddale,  and  the 
vigorous  lame  child  could  soon  visit  the  Border  waters 
on  his  pony.  He  fell  in  love  with  the  pastoral  streams, 
as  every  Borderer  does  ;  he  knew  them  in  every  aspect, 
whether  flowing  clear  in  summer  from  pool  to  pool,  or 
rushing  "  great  and  muckle  o'  spate,"  foaming  red  from 
brim  to  brim ;  or  full  and  dark,  of  the  colour  that  the 
salmon-fisher  loves.  It  was  his  joy  to  ride  the  most 
dangerous  fords,  and  to  light  the  black  woods  at  night 
with  the  flame  of  the  salmon-leisterer,  no  less  than  to 
fish  the  summer  clearness  with  the  fly,  or  to  dream 
beneath  a  tree  above  the  flowing  water.  To  him,  his 
bare  grey  hills  were  more  charming  than  even  the 
raven-haunted  precipices  and  black,  enchanted  lochs  of 
Skye ;  and  ces  bosses  verddtres,  as  Prosper  Merimee 
described  the  hills  of  Tweedside,  were  to  him  enchanted 
land.  Born  in  a  city  which  has  at  least  the  most 
beautiful  of  all  situations,  if  it  lacks  the  colour  of 
Athens,  Sir  Walter  was  also  born  in  an  old  house,  "  at 
the  head  of  the  College  Wynd,"  whence  nothing  more 
beautiful  than  squalid  streets  was  to  be  seen.  But  the 
house  stood  on  the  site  of  a  mystery  and  a  tragedy, 
the  Kirk  o'  Field,  where  Darnley  was  murdered. 

As  if  by  a  combination  of  early  influences,  memory 
of  the  storied  past  was,  from  childhood,  blended  in 
Scott's  fancy  with  love  of  Nature.  For  him,  river  and 
burn,  loch  and  hill  were  not  in  themselves  enough : 
he  must  know  what  befell  the  ancient  dwellers  in  these 


THE   PASS   OF  LENY 


The  Pass  of  Leny  is  seen  to  full  advantage  from  the 
ascent  of  Ben  Ledi.  I  was  fortunate  enough  to  view  it 
during  a  storm.  Loch  Lubnaig  in  the  distance  appeared 
and  disappeared  through  the  rain-clouds ;  their  shadows 
passing  over  the  hills  and  valley  made  a  scene  to  illustrate 
the  "  Land  of  the  Mountain."  p  g  ^ 


SCOTT  85 

places — know  their  fortunes,  their  joys  and  sorrows,  and 
their  dreams ;  know  the  fairies  and  ghosts  that  had 
haunted  them  of  old.  He  saw  Nature  in  a  kind  of 
mirage  of  the  past,  and  every  landscape  was  haunted, 
for  him,  by  Border  riders  and  Celtic  warriors,  by  maids 
glad  or  despairing,  by  foredoomed  kings  and  unhappy 
queens  of  the  Stuart  line.  The  Dowie  Dens  of  Yarrow 
are  exquisitely  fair,  whether  the  term  be  applied  to  the 
deep,  dark  pools  by  Harehead,  or  to  the  green  holms 
where  stands  the  stone  inscribed  in  barbaric  Latin.  It 
is  not  the  beauty  alone  of  the  river,  and  its  pastoral 
melancholy,  that  inspire  Scott,  but  recollections  of 
"Willie  drowned  in  Yarrow,"  and  of  lovers  slain  in 
desperate  duel  beside  the  water.  The  most  bare  and 
unlovely  of  Fifeshire  moors  captivated  him,  because  here 
he  remembered  the  pursuit  and  slaughter  of  Archbishop 
Sharp  by  a  crew  of  godly  ruffians  who  deemed  them- 
selves inspired. 

His  first  memories  were  of  Smailholme,  the  tall, 
dark,  narrow  peel -tower  standing  black  against  the 
sky-line  on  its  naked  cliff,  above  its  rushy  tarn.  There 

was  poetic  impulse  given 
By  the  green  hill  and  clear  blue  heaven.  .  .  . 

It  was  a  barren  scene  and  wild, 
Where  naked  cliffs  were  rudely  piled ; 
But  ever  and  anon  between 
Lay  velvet  tufts  of  loveliest  green ; 
And  well  the  lonely  infant  knew 
Recesses  where  the  wallflower  grew, 
And  honeysuckle  loved  to  crawl 
Up  the  low  crag  and  ruin'd  wall. 


86  POETS'  COUNTRY 

The  child  is  taken  by  what  lies  at  its  feet,  what  its 
hands  can  touch,  before  it  has  learned  to  look  abroad 
over  the  vast  level  land,  the  fighting  ground  of  Scots 
and  English.  But,  almost  at  once,  the  child  is  taught 
to  look  "  all  down  Teviotdale," 

When  some  strange  tale  bewitched  my  mind, 

Old  forayers,  who,  with  headlong  force, 

Down  from  that  strength  had  spurred  their  horse. 

From  "  that  strength  " 

The  Baron  of  Smaylho'me  rose  with  day, 

He  spurr'd  his  courser  on 
Without  stop  or  stay  down  the  rocky  way 

That  leads  to  Brotherston. 

Many  of  Scott's  landscapes  are  seen  from  horseback, 
during  "grand  gallops  on  the  hills,"  "when  I  was 
thinking  of  Marmion"  This  poet  did  not  sit  under  a 
suburban  tree  at  Hampstead,  listening  to  and  out- 
singing  the  nightingale,  like  Keats :  he  composed  in 
the  saddle,  and  his  verse  went  to 

The  cavalry  canter  of  Bonny  Dundee. 

You  hear  the  jingle  of  the  reins,  and  the  clash  of  sword 
on  stirrup,  and  with  twilight  comes  the  Court  of  the 
Fairy  Queen,  riding  to  meet  Thomas  of  Ercildoune 
"  beneath  the  Eildon  Tree." 

Even  at  three  or  four  years  of  age  the  Border  poet 
mingled  Nature  with  visions  out  of  the  lost  years  : — 

Methought  that  still,  with  trump  and  clang, 
The  gateway's  broken  arches  rang ; 


SCOTT  87 

Methought  grim  features,  seam'd  with  scars, 

Glared  through  the  window's  rusty  bars, 

And  ever,  by  the  winter  hearth, 

Old  tales  I  heard  of  woe  or  mirth, 

Of  lovers'  slights,  of  ladies'  charms, 

Of  witches'  spells,  of  warriors'  arms  ; 

Of  patriot  battles,  won  of  old 

By  Wallace  wight  and  Bruce  the  bold ; 

Of  later  fields  of  feud  and  fight, 

When,  pouring  from  their  Highland  height, 

The  Scottish  clans,  in  headlong  sway, 

Had  swept  the  scarlet  ranks  away. 

The  child,  gazing 

where  the  triple  pride 
Of  Eildon  overlooks  Strathclyde, 

hears  the  tramp  and  sees  the  fires  of  the  Roman 
legionaries  who  held  their  station  below  the  hill.  He 
believes  that  in  a  cavern  of  the  rock  slumbers  Thomas 
the  Rhymer,  among  a  company  of  sleeping  men-at- 
arms,  who  shall  rise  and  ride  at  Scotland's  need.  He 
knows  the  fairy  dell,  later  his  own,  where  True  Thomas 
met  his  unearthly  paramour,  and  whence  he  wandered 
with  her  across  red-running  streams, 

For  a'  the  bluid  that's  shed  on  earth 
Flows  in  the  stream  of  this  countrie. 

He  knows  how 

Ancram  Moor 

Ran  red  with  English  blood  ; 
Where  the  Douglas  true,  and  the  bold  Buccleuch 
'Gainst  keen  Lord  Evers  stood. 

He  has  seen  the  stone  called  "  Turn  Again,"  where  the 


88  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Scotts,  in  their  flight,  turned  against  the  Kers,  in  the 
last  great  clan  battle,  when 

Gallant  Cessford's  heart-blood  dear 
Reek'd  on  dark  Elliot's  Border  spear. 

Already  the  child  has  heard  of  Prince  Charles,  his 
victories  and  his  defeat,  and  resents  the  bloody  assize  of 
Carlisle.  He  peoples  the  landscape  with  "Wat  of 
Harden,  Wight  Willie  of  Aikwood,  Jamie  Telfer  of  the 
Fair  Dodhead,"  and  other  heroes  ;  "  not  forgetting  "  the 
celebrated  Deil  of  Littledean,  "  who  married  his  great- 
grand-aunt."  Who  can  revive  "  the  stories,  grave  and 
gay,  comic  and  warlike,"  of  the  Deil  of  Littledean  ? 
Caret  vote  sacro.  Ballads  enough  the  child  already 
knew,  and  thus  he  was  cradled  in  romance,  after  a 
fashion  unexampled  in  the  history  of  modern  poets, — 
in  the  history  of  any  poets, — since  Homer  learned  the 
legends  of  every  river  and  hill  and  town  of  heroic 
Greece. 

Always  the  first  scenery  in  Sir  Walter's  mind  is  that 
of  the  Border.  He  knew  scenes  much  more  beautiful : 
the  landscapes  of  the  West  Highland  coast,  and  of  the 
islands,  the  mountains  so  rich,  soft,  and  various  in 
colour,  so  distinguished  in  outline,  with  the  swift  tides 
flowing  and  receding,  like  great  translucent  rivers,  far 
into  the  recesses  of  the  hills.  He  knew  these  things  of 
beauty,  but  only  as  a  visitor,  they  were  not  places  in 
his  own  country ;  his  life  had  not  been  passed  among 
them,  they  made  no  part  of  his  earliest  memories. 


THE   FALLS   OF   LENY 

The  Falls  of  Leny  are  in  the  Pass  of  the  same  name. 
The  best  time  to  see  them  is  when  the  river  is  "  in  spate/' 
giving  some  idea  of  "The  Land  of  the  Flood." 


SCOTT  89 

Much  as  he  knew  of  Highland  tradition,  he  had  not 
the  language  of  the  people  who  preserve  it ;  in  fact,  the 
far  more  beautiful  mountains  of  Moydart  and  Morvern 
were  not  so  haunted,  for  him,  as  his  own  green  or 
heather-clad,  round-shouldered  knowes.  These  undu- 
lations and  protuberances  of  the  soil — commonly  as 
destitute  of  outline  as  the  Countess  disdainfully  referred 
to  by  Mr.  Mantalini — Sir  Walter  was  pleased  to  call 
"  mountains."  His  partiality  for  them  was  as  tender,  as 
pardonable,  and  as  excessive  as  the  partiality  of  a 
mother  for  her  plain  children.  The  alien  who  visits  the 
Border  with  Scott's  poetry  in  his  mind  is,  I  must  admit, 
apt  to  be  disappointed.  Scott,  in  his  mind,  "has  a 
vision  of  his  own,"  like  the  lover's  vision  of  his  lady. 
The  rest  of  mankind  did  not  see  the  Cid  as  Chimene 
saw  him,  or  Chimene  as  the  Cid  saw  her ;  and  in  the 
same  way  Scott's  love  of  his  own  country  idealised  her 
honest,  sonsy  features,  and  made  his  sheriffdom  "an 
unsubstantial  fairy  place."  In  his  Epistle  to  the 
Rev.  John  Marriott,  M.A.  (Marmion,  Introduction  to 
Canto  II.),  Sir  Walter  thus  describes  the  loch  of  St. 
Mary's,  at  the  head  of  Yarrow  : — 

Oft  in  my  mind  such  thoughts  awake, 

By  lone  Saint  Mary's  silent  lake ; 

Thou  know'st  it  well, — nor  fen,  nor  sedge, 

Pollute  the  pure  lake's  crystal  edge ; 

Abrupt  and  sheer,  the  mountains  sink 

At  once  upon  the  level  brink ; 

And  just  a  trace  of  silver  sand 

Marks  where  the  water  meets  the  land. 


90  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Far  in  the  mirror,  bright  and  blue, 

Each  hill's  huge  outline  you  may  view ; 

Shaggy  with  heath,  but  lonely  bare, 

Nor  tree,  nor  bush,  nor  brake,  is  there, 

Save  where,  of  land,  yon  slender  line 

Bears  thwart  the  lake  the  scatter'd  pine, 

Yet  even  this  nakedness  has  power, 

And  aids  the  feeling  of  the  hour  : 

Nor  thicket,  dell,  nor  copse  you  spy, 

Where  living  thing  conceal'd  might  lie ; 

Nor  point,  retiring,  hides  a  dell, 

Where  swain,  or  woodman  lone,  might  dwell ; 

There's  nothing  left  to  fancy's  guess, 

You  see  that  all  is  loneliness  : 

And  silence  aids — though  the  steep  hills 

Send  to  the  lake  a  thousand  rills ; 

In  summer-tide,  so  soft  they  weep, 

The  sound  but  lulls  the  ear  asleep  ; 

Your  horse's  hoof-tread  sounds  too  rude, 

So  stilly  is  the  solitude. 

If  "  thou  knowest  it  well "  could  be  said  with  truth  to 
Mr.  Marriott,  he  must  have  smiled  when  he  read  this 
landscape  in  rhyme. 

Moi  aussi,  I  know  "  lone  St.  Mary's  silent  lake " 
very  well,  and  am  much  attached  to  it,  when  it  is  lonely, 
and  not  sonorous  with  the  whoops  of  excursionists 
playing  at  kiss-in-the-ring.  But  the  pure  lake  is  not 
"  crystal,"  the  water  is  of  the  wonted  mossy  brown.  It 
is  by  a  wonderful  stretch  of  loving  memory  that  Scott 
ventures  to  say  : — 

Abrupt  and  sheer,  the  mountains  sink 
At  once  upon  the  level  brink. 

There  are  no  mountains,  nothing  is  "abrupt,"  nothing 


SCOTT  91 

is  "  sheer  "  ;  green,  grassy  slopes  descend  placidly  to  the 
loch  on  one  side,  the  other  side  is  a  plain,  to  which  hills 
fall  easily.  It  is  quite  true  that  there  are  no  trees, 
except  where  the  "  slender  line  "  of  land  parts  St.  Mary's 
from  the  Loch  of  the  Lowes.  There  is  even  no  "  trace 
of  silver  sand,"  there  is  merely  the  white  margin  of  dry 
stones,  ordinary  stones,  whatever  their  formation  may 
be.  As  to  "a  thousand  rills,"  unless  you  call  Meggat 
water  a  "rill"  (it  is  a  sizable  burn),  I  do  not  think 
there  is  a  rill  about  the  place. 

Pardon  me,  St.  Mary  of  the  Lowes,  and  Spirit  of 
Sir  Walter !  but  affection  designed  the  picture,  which 
is  destitute  of  topographical  accuracy.  The  poet,  in 
short,  is  in  love  with  the  haunted  loneliness  where 
stands  "Dryhope's  ruined  tower,"  and  he  "thinks  on 
Yarrow's  faded  flower,"  his  ancestress,  and  on  "the 
Wizard  Priest"  buried  in  the  chapel  that  his  clan 
destroyed,  because  they  could  not  find  there  a  gentle- 
man whose  throat  they  were  anxious  to  cut. 

They  burn'd  the  chapel  for  very  rage, 

And  cursed  Lord  Cranstoun's  Goblin  Page — 

a  circumstance  charming  to  Scott,  as  the  Cranstouns 
were  his  intimate  friends. 

He  goes  on  to  write  of  dark  Loch  Skene  as  if  it 
were  no  less  wild  and  romantic  than  Loch  Coruisk, 
whereas  it  is  a  black,  desolate,  windy  tarn  enough,  with 
a  scathed  kind  of  look,  while  its  waters  do  escape  down 
a  perpendicular  steep  into  a  respectable  cascade.  The 


92  POETS'  COUNTRY 

peculiarity  of  this  lochan  of  the  heights  is  the  sudden 
onfall  of  dense  white  fogs,  into  which  to  walk  is  more 
than  a  man's  life  is  worth.  Loch  Skene,  I  confess,  is 
an  uncanny  place,  and  thereby  Hob  Dob  and  Davie 
Din  met  and  overcame  the  Accuser  of  the  Brethren ; 
but  Loch  Skene  is  not  so  grandiose  as  Sir  Walter 
painted  it.  Many  years  ago  a  lady  made  these 
comments  to  the  late  Lord  Napier,  whose  dwelling  was 
in  upper  Ettrick.  "The  hills,"  she  said,  "are  like  a 
series  of  green  dish-covers."  His  Lordship  was  devoted 
to  "  his  ain  countrie,"  but  he  answered,  with  a  twinkle 
of  the  eye,  that  "  all  his  life  he  had  been  trying  not  to 
think  so." 

"  Thus  plainly  speaketh  Montaigne  concerning  cats," 
says  Izaak  Walton,  who  clearly  looked  on  cats  in  a 
proper  spirit  of  reverence.  Following  the  candid 
example  of  Montaigne,  I  have  ventured  to  speak 
plainly  about  the  Border  hills,  which  disappoint  a 
stranger  as  they  disappointed  Washington  Irving. 
But  there  are  Border  hills  and  Border  hills.  No  one 
should  be  disappointed  who  approaches  them,  as  Scott 
did  for  several  of  his  happiest  years,  from  Ashestiel, 
his  home  on  the  upper  Tweed.  Here  the  river  no 
longer  flows  through  mere  green  uplands,  but  is  beset 
by  steep,  wooded  banks,  the  knees  of  the  heather-clad 
hills  which  divide  Tweed  from  Ettrick  and  Yarrow. 
Though  not  high,  they  are  beautiful  in  colour,  and 
the  Weirdlaw  and  Ettrickpen  have  charm  of  outline. 
They  are  not  visible  from  Abbotsford,  but  from 


ASHIESTIEL 


Ashiestiel  on  Tweed,  the  house  in  which  Scott  wrote 
parts  of  Marmian,  is  seen  from  the  bridge.  It  just  appears 
through  the  trees  that  line  the  river,  which  is  here  perhaps 
at  its  loveliest. 


SCOTT  93 

Cauldshields  Loch,  a  tarn  lying  high  on  the  Abbotsford 
estate.  Behind  Ashestiel,  up  the  Peel  burn,  it  is  an 
easy  walk  or  ride  to  summits  which  look  down  on  the 
vale  of  Yarrow,  and  on  Minchmuir,  across  which 
Montrose  rode  in  the  flight  from  the  fatal  field  of 
Philiphaugh.  While  Tweed  from  Peebles  to  the 
lovely  site  of  Yair  is  always  variously  beautiful,  it 
attains  its  highest  charm  below  Abbotsford,  from 
Melrose,  so  nobly  sung  of  in  The  Lay  of  the  Last 
Minstrel,  through'  Gladswood,  Makerstoun,  and  Mer- 
toun.  William  of  Deloraine's  ride,  in  the  Lay,  com- 
bines pictures  of  all  the  landscapes  from  Branxholme 
in  upper  Teviotdale,  to  Ail  and  Tweed,  ending  with 
the  lines  on  fair  Melrose,  too  familiar  for  quotation, 
while  the  Introductory  Epistle  to  the  First  Canto  of 
Marmion  describes  the  little  old  house  of  Ashestiel  as 
it  is  when 

November's  sky  is  chill  and  drear, 
November's  leaf  is  red  and  sear. 

Every  one  has  regretted  that  Scott,  when  obliged  to 
leave  Ashestiel,  fixed  his  home  on  "  a  bare  haugh  and 
a  bank  "  at  Abbotsford.  Here  he  was  in  the  centre  of 
his  own  country,  but  the  site  and  the  views  from  the 
site  are  not  beautiful.  The  artist  has  chosen  to 
illustrate  Melrose  Abbey  and  the  Tweed  at  Ashestiel 
for  his  Border  sketches.  For  the  Highland  landscapes 
he  has  selected  the  Pass  and  the  Falls  of  Leny,  the 
gates  of  Scott's  other  enchanted  land,  the  Highlands, 
within  cry  of  Benledi  and  Benvoirlich.  He  had  a  drop 


94  POETS'  COUNTRY 

of  Campbell  blood,  through  a  grandmother,  though  he 
was  not  especially  partial  to  the  great  anti-Jacobite 
clan  in  his  writings.  His  heart,  at  least,  was  with  the 
clans  that  fought  for  Charlie — Stewarts,  Macdonalds, 
Macleans,  and  the  disinherited  tribe  of  Macgregors. 
Yet,  so  evenly  was  Sir  Walter's  heart  balanced  by 
his  head,  that,  had  he  lived  in  1745,  he  might  have 
mounted  the  Black  Cockade  and  served  King  George, 
not  King  James,  as  one  of  the  rather  inglorious  Edin- 
burgh Volunteers.  However  that  may  have  been,  from 
infancy,  like  most  children,  he  favoured  the  Rightful 
Cause,  and  in  the  Macgregors  and  Macdonalds  re- 
cognised men  who,  up  to  his  grandfather's  time,  lived 
much  like  his  own  Border  ancestors. 

The  Highlands,  though  he  knew  them  less  well, 
were  nearest  to  the  Border  in  his  sympathies.  He 
was  not  more  than  fifteen  when,  as  a  lawyer's  clerk, 
and  on  a  very  unsympathetic  errand,  he  first  rode 
through  the  passes  from  Perth,  among  the  glens 
whither  he  later  conducted  Waverley  and  Montrose. 
The  Pass  of  Leny  is  described  in  the  opening  of  The 
Legend  of  Montrose ;  above  this  beautiful  gateway  of 
the  hills  the  great  Marquis  meets  the  no  less  immortal 
Dugald  Dalgetty,  though  how  Dalgetty,  coming  from 
the  Continent,  found  himself  there  is  an  unsolved 
mystery.  His  first  view  of  Perth,  at  the  age  of  fifteen, 
Scott  describes  in  the  Introduction  to  The  Fair  Maid 
of  Perth :  "  I  recollect  pulling  up  the  reins  without 
meaning  to  do  so,  and  gazing  on  the  scene  before  me 


SCOTT  95 

as  if  I  had  been  afraid  it  would  shift,  like  those  in  a 
theatre,  before  I  could  distinctly  observe  its  different 
parts,  or  convince  myself  that  what  I  saw  was  real. 
Since  that  hour  the  recollection  of  that  inimitable 
landscape  has  possessed  the  strongest  influence  over 
my  mind,  and  retained  its  place  as  a  memorable  thing, 
while  much  that  was  influential  on  my  fortunes  has 
fled  from  my  recollection." 

What  could  be  more  "influential  on  his  own 
fortunes"  than  the  scenes  that  were  to  make  him 
celebrated  because  he  celebrated  them  ?  The  aspect 
of  Glencoe,  beheld  on  a  day  of  storm,  remained  equally 
memorable  to  Dickens,  but  for  the  Massacre  and  the 
legends  of  Glencoe  Dickens  appears  not  to  have  cared. 
Scott,  on  the  other  hand,  felt  near  Perth  that  he  was 
standing  where  Agricola  may  have  stood,  comparing  in 
his  mind  the  Tay  with  his  native  Tiber,  the  Inch  of  Perth 
with  the  Campus  Martius.  In  the  town  at  his  feet  Scott 
remembered  that  James  I.  was  cruelly  murdered ;  that 
here  Knox  had  witnessed  the  destruction  of  palace  and 
monasteries,  that  hither  James  VI.  had  ridden  from 
Falkland  to  that  ill  dinner  whereafter  the  Ruthvens, 
his  hosts,  were  slain  in  their  own  halls.  Here 
Queen  Mary,  fresh  from  France,  was  insulted  in 
the  Protestant  pageants,  and  received  the  gift  of  a 
diamond  cross  from  some  loyal  hand ;  here  James 
VIII.  loitered  hopeless,  in  1715-1716;  here  Prince 
Charles  rested  in  the  first  hopes  of  the  march 
to  Prestonpans ;  and  far  beyond  lay  the  hills  of 


96  POETS'  COUNTRY 

romance.     The  place  was  as  rich  in  many  memories 
as  in  beauty. 

For  an  intimate  knowledge  of  scenes  more  remote 
and  romance  less  distant  Scott  presently  became  indebted 
to  Stewart  of  Invernahyle,  who  had  been  out  in  1715 
and  1745,  and  had  fought  a  sword-and-target  duel  with 
Rob  Roy.  He  penetrated  into  the  green  hills  of 
Appin,  then  still  held  by  the  Stewarts — a  land  rich  in 
traditions  of  war  and  of  fairies,  and  in  the  second-sight. 
Journeying  with  a  military  escort  for  the  eviction  of 
Maclaren  tenants  of  Stewart  of  Appin,  he  first  saw 
Loch  Katrine  and  the  Trossachs,  which  he  brought  half 
the  world  to  see,  by  the  spells  of  The  Lady  of  the 
Lake. 

Boon  nature  scatter'd,  free  and  wild, 
Each  plant  or  flower,  the  mountain's  child. 
Here  eglantine  embalm'd  the  air, 
Hawthorn  and  hazel  mingled  there  ; 
The  primrose  pale  and  violet  flower, 
Found  in  each  cliff  a  narrow  bower ; 
Fox-glove  and  night-shade,  side  by  side, 
Emblems  of  punishment  and  pride, 
Grouped  their  dark  hues  with  every  stain 
The  weather-beaten  crags  retain. 
With  boughs  that  quaked  at  every  breath, 
Grey  birch  and  aspen  wept  beneath ; 
Aloft,  the  ash  and  warrior  oak 
Cast  anchor  in  the  rifted  rock ; 
And,  higher  yet,  the  pine-tree  hung 
His  shatter'd  trunk,  and  frequent  flung, 
Where  seem'd  the  cliffs  to  meet  on  high, 
His  boughs  athwart  the  narrow'd  sky. 
Highest  of  all,  where  white  peaks  glanced, 
Where  glist'ning  streamers  waved  and  danced, 


SCOTT  97 

The  wanderer's  eye  could  barely  view 
The  summer  heaven's  delicious  blue  ; 
So  wondrous  wild,  the  whole  might  seem 
The  scenery  of  a  fairy  dream. 

Onward,  amid  the  copse  'gan  peep 
A  narrow  inlet,  still  and  deep, 
Affording  scarce  such  breadth  of  brim 
As  served  the  wild  duck's  brood  to  swim. 
Lost  for  a  space,  through  thickets  veering, 
But  broader  when  again  appearing, 
Tall  rocks  and  tufted  knolls  their  face 
Could  on  the  dark-blue  mirror  trace  ; 
And  farther  as  the  Hunter  stray'd, 
Still  broader  sweep  its  channels  made. 
The  shaggy  mounds  no  longer  stood, 
Emerging  from  entangled  wood, 
But,  wave-encircled,  seem'd  to  float, 
Like  castle  girdled  with  its  moat ; 
Yet  broader  floods  extending  still 
Divide  them  from  their  parent  hill, 
Till  each,  retiring,  claims  to  be 
An  islet  in  an  inland  sea. 

The  Highland  landscapes,  farther  north  and  in  the 
Isles,  Scott  did  not  know  till  he  sailed  round  the 
coasts,  after  writing  Waver  ley,  in  1814.  They  are 
reflected  in  The  Lord  of  the  Isles — the  desolate  peaks 
and  the  black  lochs  of  Skye,  and  the  ruined  castles  of 
the  Celtic  princes  : — 

Each  on  its  own  dark  cape  reclined, 
And  listening  to  its  own  wild  wind, 

and  reminiscent  of  its  own  wilder  history  of  cruel  clan 
wars.     It  is  a  fact  little  known,  if  we  may  trust  to 

tradition  for  facts,  that,  as   late   as   the   Restoration, 

H 


98  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Lochaber  was  the  scene  of  slayings  more  fierce,  between 
men  of  the  same  name  and  kin,  than  those  which  used 
to  desolate  heathen  or  half -converted  Iceland  six 
centuries  earlier.  The  stories  told  by  "John  Sobieski 
and  Charles  Edward  Stuart"  concerning  "the  Feuds 
of  Keppoch,"  in  their  Lays  of  the  Deer  Forest, 
merely  stagger  the  Lowland  reader.  Scott  does  not 
dwell  on  these  astonishingly  picturesque  events  in  his 
poetry,  but  he  knew  more  legends  than  any  other 
Sassenach,  though,  unluckily,  he  never  acquired  Gaelic. 
His  excursions  into  that  tongue  make  the  learned  smile 
and  sigh !  None  the  less,  like  Yama  the  discoverer  of 
Death,  in  the  Rig  Veda,  "he  opened  a  path  unto 
many "  into  the  Highlands.  He  never  ceased  to  love 
them.  In  his  dying  days,  in  Italy,  he  beheld  Lake 
Avernus,  and  astonished  an  English  companion  by 
muttering, 

Up  the  rocky  hill-side, 

And  down  the  scroggy  glen, 
We  daurna  gang  a-milking, 

For  Charlie  and  his  men ! 

Why  he  thus  spoke,  there,  I  never  could  guess  till  I 
read  in  Lockhart's  MS.  Diary  that  "  Lake  Avernus  is 
like  a  third-rate  Highland  loch." 

Has  not  Sir  Walter,  appropriately,  but  careless  of 
prosody,  quoted 

Moritur  et  moriens  dulces  reminiscitur  Argos  ? 

On  his  way  to  death,  in  Italy,  his  heart  was  in  the 
Highlands.     He  could  not  stay  in  Rome,  and  leave  his 


MELROSE  ABBEY 

Melrose  Abbey  by  moonlight.  Of  the  many  legends 
connected  with  it,  the  following,  told  to  me  while  I  was  at 
work,  is  new  to  me.  The  builder,  a  holy  man,  could  not 
satisfy  himself  with  designs  of  the  windows,  and  to  seek 
inspiration  went  on  a  pilgrimage  to  the  Holy  Laud.  There 
he  saw  in  a  vision  what  he  had  long  sought  after,  and 
hastening  home,  found  the  work  as  revealed  to  him  already 
wrought  by  angel  hands.  p  g  -^y. 


SCOTT  99 

ashes  near  the  dust  of  the  Royal  line.  He  hurried 
back  to  lay  himself  where,  in  a  love-letter  to  his  bride, 
long  ago,  he  had  expressed  his  wish  to  lie  at  last,  in 
the  ruined  abbey  of  Dryburgh,  within  the  sound  of  the 
water  of  the  Tweed. 

The  deep  and  strong  affection  of  his  nature  had 
transfigured  each  hill  and  burn,  river,  loch,  and  crum- 
bling tower  of  his  own  and  his  father's  land,  that  is  now 
to  the  world  a  sacred  place.  The  haunted  crests  of  the 
cloven  hill  of  Eildon  are  his  monument,  as  Ida  of  the 
many  springs  is  the  monument  of  Homer. 


SHELLEY  AND   NATURE 

THE  truth  about  Shelley's  poetical  relation  to  Nature 
may  be  attained,  with  mathematical  precision,  by 
reversing  everything  that  has  been  said  in  the  case  of 
Scott.  Sir  Walter  with  half  his  soul  inhabited  the 
past :  Shelley  hated  the  past,  detested  the  study  of 
History,  and  dwelt  in  his  own  ideal  future.  Scott, 
though  intellectually  a  friend  of  the  principles  of  the 
Reformation,  displays  in  his  poems  and  novels  a  great 
tenderness  for  the  ancient  faith  ;  while  Shelley,  in  a 
soaring  effort,  wrote  of 

Bloody  Faith,  the  foulest  spawn  of  Time. 

Scott  rejoiced  in  local  traditions,  but  I  cannot 
remember  that  Shelley  ever  alluded  to  those  of  his 
own  neighbourhood,  for  example,  to  the  headless  ghost 
that  leaped  up  behind  solitary  riders,  though  he  spoke 
of  the  monstrous  serpent  which,  "  in  the  time  of  King 
James  I.,  was  seen  to  walk  upon  feet  ...  a  serpent 
of  countenance  very  proud."  The  animal  was  supposed, 
by  local  naturalists,  to  be  on  the  point  of  developing 
wings. 

100 


SHELLEY  101 

Shelley's  natal  chamber  looked  out  over  "placid 
Sussex  grass-land,"  a  featureless  landscape,  while  "the 
mountainous  outline  of  Hindhead"  (T  quote  from 
Professor  Dowden)  is  visible  from  the  garden.  The 
mountainous  outline  of  Hindhead  had  not  the  romantic 
associations  of  the  Wardlaw  Hill  or  of  Smailholme 
Tower;  and  Shelley,  from  childhood  upwards,  con- 
structed his  romances  with  no  local  reference.  In 
place  of  reading,  when  a  boy,  the  Border  ballads  and 
Ariosto,  he  rejoiced,  like  other  boys,  in  the  crude 
inventions  of  "  sixpenny  shockers " ;  and  while,  unlike 
Dickens  and  Scott,  he  found  Fielding  and  Smollett 
"tame,"  he  seems  to  have  rejoiced,  like  Sir  Walter, 
in  the  romances  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe.  She,  who  had 
never  been  in  Italy,  may  have  turned  his  thoughts, 
by  her  description  of  Italian  mountains,  in  the  direction 
of  that  land  of  robbers'  castles  and  of  murderous  priests. 
From  such  books  as  hers  Shelley  derived  the  Italy 
tenanted  by  the  bold  bad  hero  of  his  schoolboy  romance, 
Zastrozzi.  At  Eton,  Shelley's  one  battle  was  so  far 
Homeric  in  that  his  prowess  resembled  that  of  Paris 
in  his  duel  with  Menelaus.  The  placid  scenery  of  Eton 
only  once  recognisably  inspires  his  Muse,  nor  does  "the 
mountainous  outline  "  of  Shotover  appear  in  his  verse. 
He  left  the  Oxford  landscape  to  Matthew  Arnold : 
the  Thames  was  associated  in  his  mind  with  tea,  rolls, 
eggs,  and  radishes.  The  British  landscape  before  him 
was  transfigured  in  his  dreams,  and  English  Nature 
became  a  mere  point  de  repere,  whence  he  built  up 


102  POETS'  COUNTRY 

visions  of  stupendous  beauty  ;  alps  shivered  by  lightning 
and  thunder ;  "  airy  battlements  that  surmount  the 
universe."  Shelley's  soul  was  always  wandering  in 
lands  which  his  feet  never  trod.  He  commenced  poet 
with  an  epic  (mainly  unpublished)  on  "  The  Wandering 
Jew,"  the  foregoer  of  such  roamers  as  his  hero  in 
Alastor  and  his  Prince  Athanase.  Deserts  uninhabited, 
unsailed  seas,  mountain  gorges  of  unfathomed  depth, 
and  the  vast  and  vaporous  fields  and  lakes  of  air  make 
up  Shelley's  favourite  landscape.  Like  Euripides  he 
is  "  a  meteoric  poet " ;  the  Nature  which  charms  him 
most  is  elemental :  snow  and  fire  and  empty  illimitable 
sea,  not  the  quiet  fields  in  which  are  the  homes  of 
Englishmen. 

In  1810  The  Wandering  Jew  was  offered  to 
Ballantyne  and  Co.,  "Co."  being  Mr.  Walter  Scott. 
One  or  other  of  the  Ballantynes  (Professor  Dowden 
says  that  it  was  John)  replied  that,  as  The  Lady  of 
the  Lake  had  been  assailed  by  the  Presbyterian 
ministers  for  "atheistical  doctrines,"  it  was  too 
dangerous  to  publish  The  Wandering  Jew.  That 
Hebrew  can  scarcely  have  been  an  atheist — at  least 
he  must  have  been  a  very  stiff-necked  person  if  he 
was — but  probably  the  poem  was  hardly  orthodox. 

Shelley  has  left,  by  a  kind  of  accident,  a  description 
of  an  Oxford  landscape :  nothing  can  be  less  like  the 
gorgeous  panoramas  of  Alastor  and  The  Revolt  of 
Islam.  "  We  suddenly  turned  the  corner  of  a  lane, 
and  the  view,  which  its  high  banks  and  hedges  had  con- 


SHELLEY  103 

cealed,  presented  itself.  The  view  consisted  of  a  wind- 
mill, standing  in  one  among  many  plashy  meadows, 
enclosed  with  stone  walls ;  the  irregular  and  broken 
ground  between  the  wall  and  the  road  in  which  we 
stood  ;  a  long  low  hill  behind  the  windmill ;  and  a  grey 
covering  of  uniform  cloud  spread  over  the  evening  sky. 
It  was  that  season  when  the  last  leaf  had  just  fallen 
from  the  scant  and  stunted  ash."  Here,  in  few  words, 
is  painted  a  scene  that  lives  before  "  the  inner  eye " : 
probably  the  place  is  somewhere  on  the  river  near 
Godstow.  Shelley  goes  on  :  "  The  effect  which  it  pro- 
duced on  me  was  not  such  as  could  have  been  expected. 
I  suddenly  remembered  to  have  seen  that  exact  scene 
in  some  dream  of  long  ..."  A  blank  follows,  and 
then  the  note,  "  Here  I  was  obliged  to  leave  off,  over- 
come by  thrilling  horror." 

Writing  five  years  after  the  event — which,  to  the 
ordinary  mind  seems  merely  rather  curious — Shelley 
was  unable  to  complete  the  record,  so  extraordinary 
was  the  impression  made  on  his  imagination  by  the 
sense 

"  I  have  been  here  before, 
But  how  or  when  I  cannot  tell." 

More  than  other  poets,  at  least  in  his  early  years, 
Shelley  moved  "in  worlds  not  realised,"  worlds  of 
dream  and  vision.  The  scenery  of  Queen  Mob  is  not 
earthly  but  cosmic. 

The  chariot's  way 
Lay  through  the  midst  of  an  immense  concave, 


104  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Radiant  with  million  constellations,  tinged 
With  shades  of  infinite  colour, 
And  semicircled  with  a  belt 
Flashing  incessant  meteors. 

We  are  far  enough  away  here  from  the  scenes  that 
Shelley  knew  ;  "the  meadows  and  the  quiet  trees";  the 
windmill,  the  low  hill,  the  plashy  fields,  the  stunted 
leafless  ash,  and  the  uniform  vault  of  grey.  Shelley 
prefers  to  inhabit 

Those  far  clouds  of  feathery  gold 
Shaded  with  deepest  purple,  gleam 
Like  islands  on  a  dark  blue  sea, 

and  to  gaze  down  from  "  the  overhanging  battlement " 
of  the  fairy's  cloud  palace  on  "  Palmyra's  ruined  palaces," 
and  the  Pyramids  by  old  Nile,  while  Queen  Mab 
(never  was  fairy  so  didactic!)  discourses  on  the 
mutability  of  human  existence.  Meanwhile,  listening 

to  Mab, 

The  Spirit, 

In  ecstasy  of  admiration,  felt 
All  knowledge  of  the  past  revived, 

including  some  hints  on  the  civilisation  of  prehistoric 
Greenland. 

We  are  not  sorry  when  the  sermon  of  the  advanced 
fairy  is  over,  and 

Speechless  with  bliss  the  Spirit  mounts  the  car, 

and  drives  home  to  lanthe.  As  Mrs.  Shelley  says,  in 
Qiieen  Mab  Shelley  "made  the  whole  universe  the 
object  and  subject  of  his  song."  On  the  other  hand, 
the  eastern  hemisphere  sufficed  as  the  subject  of 


ETON   COLLEGE   CHAPEL  FROM   THE  THAMES 

A  characteristic  reach  of  the  Thames  associated  with 
Shelley,  who  was  passionately  fond  of  boating  ;  though  it  is 
not  certain  that  he  was  a  "  wet  bob  "  at  school. 


SHELLEY  105 

Alastor.  Shelley  had  now  tasted  the  joys  of  a  wander- 
ing existence,  travelling  with  a  donkey,  like  Mr. 
Stevenson,  through  France  to  Switzerland,  visiting 
the  source  of  the  Thames,  and  making  a  voyage  in  a 
wherry  from  Windsor  to  Cricklade.  "  Alastor  was 
composed  on  his  return."  Another  poet  might  now 
have  been  inspired  to  treat  Nature  in  the  spirit  of  The 
Scholar  Gipsy.  Not  so  Shelley.  He  makes  his  poet 
"  seek  strange  truths  in  undiscovered  lands,"  and 

His  wandering  step 
Obedient  to  high  thoughts,  has  visited 
The  awful  ruins  of  the  days  of  old  : 
Athens,  and  Tyre,  arid  Balbec,  and  the  waste 
Where  stood  Jerusalem,  the  fallen  towers 
Of  Babylon,  the  eternal  pyramids, 
Memphis  and  Thebes,  and  whatsoe'er  of  strange 
Sculptured  on  alabaster  obelisk, 
Of  jasper  tomb,  or  mutilated  sphinx, 
Dark  Ethiopia  in  her  desert  hills 
Conceals.     Among  the  ruined  temples  there, 
Stupendous  columns,  and  wild  images 
Of  more  than  man,  where  marble  daemons  watch 
The  Zodiac's  brazen  mystery,  and  dead  men 
Hang  their  mute  thoughts  on  the  mute  walls  around, 
He  lingered,  poring  on  memorials 
Of  the  world's  youth,  through  the  long  burning  day 
Gazed  on  those  speechless  shapes,  nor,  when  the  moon 
Filled  the  mysterious  halls  with  floating  shades 
Suspended  he  that  task,  but  ever  gazed 
And  gazed,  till  meaning  on  his  vacant  mind 
Flashed  like  strong  inspiration,  and  he  saw 
The  thrilling  secrets  of  the  birth  of  time. 

Starting   from   Athens,   the   pilgrim   of  the   poem 
begins  a  pedestrian  tour  to  Balbec,  Babylon,  Memphis, 


106  POETS'  COUNTRY 

the  Soudan,  Arabia,  Persia,  and  so  through  Central 
Asia  and  the  Oxus  to  Cachmire,  returning  by  way  of 
Aornos  and  Balk  to  "the  lone  Chorasmian  shore," 
where  he  is  fortunate  enough  to  find  a  casual  boat  in 

a  wide  and  melancholy  waste 
Of  putrid  marshes. 

The  boat  not  being  padlocked,  he  goes  on  board,  and 
pushes  off. 

At  midnight 

The  moon  arose  :  and  lo  !  the  ethereal  cliffs 
Of  Caucasus,  whose  icy  summits  shone 
Among  the  stars  like  sunlight,  and  around 
Whose  caverned  base  the  whirlpools  and  the  waves 
Bursting  and  eddying  irresistibly 
Rage  and  resound  for  ever. — Who  shall  save  ? — 
The  boat  fled  on, — the  boiling  torrent  drove, — 
The  crags  closed  round  with  black  and  jagged  arms, 
The  shattered  mountain  overhung  the  sea, 
And  faster  still,  beyond  all  human  speed, 
Suspended  on  the  sweep  of  the  smooth  wave, 
The  little  boat  was  driven.     A  cavern  there 
Yawned,  and  amid  its  slant  and  winding  depths 
Ingulphed  the  rushing  sea.     The  boat  fled  on 
With  unrelaxing  speed. — "  Vision  and  Love ! " 
The  poet  cried  aloud,  "  I  have  beheld 
The  path  of  thy  departure.     Sleep  and  death 
Shall  not  divide  us  long." 

The  poet  finally  expires,  alone,  on  the  brink  of  a 
tremendous  chasm. 

Such  were,  on  Shelley's  genius,  the  singular  results 
of  a  view  of  the  Alps,  and  a  boating  tour  on  the 
Thames.  He  was  incapable  of  following  the  advice  of 


SHELLEY  107 

Sidney  Smith,  "Take  short  views."  His  powers  were 
still  immature ;  he  had  not  yet  "  found  himself,"  but 
he  already  was  and  he  remained  a  cosmic,  not  an  earthly 
poet.  In  the  Revolt  of  Islam  he  sees  the  world  and 
life  in  the  light  of 

A  wandering  Meteor  by  some  wild  wind  sent, 
Hung  high  in  the  green  dome,  to  which  it  lent 
A  faint  and  pallid  lustre. 

It  seemed  as  if  Shelley  could  not  come  down  to 
earth,  except  to  brand  priests  and  kings  with  his 
wrath,  to  describe  the  hecatombs  of  their  victims, 
and  to  watch 

the  sad  pageant  of  man's  miseries. 

His  pleasure  is  taken  in  enchanted  boats,  floating 
through  the  ocean  of  air  !  At  Oxford,  however,  he  was 
not  a  boating  man 

My  soul  is  an  enchanted  boat, 

Which,  like  a  sleeping  swan,  doth  float 
Upon  the  silver  waves  of  thy  sweet  singing  ; 

And  thine  doth  like  an  angel  sit 

Beside  a  helm  conducting  it, 
Whilst  all  the  winds  with  melody  are  ringing. 

It  seems  to  float  ever,  for  ever, 

Upon  that  many-winding  river, 

Between  mountains,  woods,  abysses, 

A  paradise  of  wildernesses  ! 
Till,  like  one  in  slumber  bound, 
Borne  to  the  ocean,  I  float  down,  around, 
Into  a  sea  profound,  of  ever-spreading  sound  • 


108  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Meanwhile  thy  spirit  lifts  its  pinions 
In  music's  most  serene  dominions ; 
Catching  the  winds  that  fan  that  happy  heaven. 
And  we  sail  on,  away,  afar, 
Without  a  course,  without  a  star, 
But,  by  the  instinct  of  sweet  music  driven ; 
Till  through  Elysian  garden  islets, 
By  thee,  most  beautiful  of  pilots, 
Where  never  mortal  pinnace  glided, 
The  boat  of  my  desire  is  guided : 
Realms  where  the  air  we  breathe  is  love, 
Which  in  the  winds  and  on  the  waves  doth  move, 
Harmonising  this  earth  with  what  we  feel  above. 


We  have  pass'd  Age's  icy  caves, 

And  Manhood's  dark  and  tossing  waves, 
And  Youth's  smooth  ocean,  smiling  to  betray : 

Beyond  the  glassy  gulphs  we  flee 

Of  shadow-peopled  Infancy, 
Through  Death  and  Birth,  to  a  diviner  day  ; 

A  paradise  of  vaulted  bowers, 

Lit  by  downward-gazing  flowers, 

And  watery  paths  that  wind  between 

Wildernesses  calm  and  green, 
Peopled  by  shapes  too  bright  to  see, 
And  rest,  having  beheld  ;  somewhat  like  thee ; 
Which  walk  upon  the  sea,  and  chaunt  melodiously ! 

"  Oh  that  a  chariot  of  cloud  were  mine "  is  always 
his  aspiration.  His  dwelling  is  in  the  cave  of  "The 
Witch  of  Atlas,"  and  it  is  in  her  boat  that  he  voyages, 
high  above  the  less  remote  of  the  fixed  stars. 

Where,  like  a  meadow  which  no  scythe  has  shaven, 
Which  rain  could  never  bend  or  whirl-blast  shake, 

With  the  Antarctic  constellations  paven, 

Canopus  and  his  crew,  lay  the  Austral  lake — 


SHELLEY  109 

There  she  would  build  herself  a  windless  haven 
Out  of  the  clouds  whose  moving  turrets  make 
The  bastions  of  the  storm,  when  through  the  sky 
The  spirits  of  the  tempest  thundered  by. 

A  haven  beneath  whose  translucent  floor 
The  tremulous  stars  sparkled  unfathomably, 

And  around  which  the  solid  vapours  hoar, 
Based  on  the  level  waters,  to  the  sky 

Lifted  their  dreadful  crags,  and  like  a  shore 
Of  wintry  mountains,  inaccessibly 

Hemmed  in  with  rifts  and  precipices  gray, 

And  hanging  crags,  many  a  cove  and  bay. 

Mrs.  Shelley  frankly  confesses  that  she  wished  her 
lord  to  "  adopt  subjects  that  would  more  suit  the  popular 
taste  than  a  poem  conceived  in  the  abstract  and  dreamy 
spirit  of  The  Witch  of  Atlas"  "  His  poems  ought  to  be 
more  addressed  to  the  common  feelings  of  men." 
"  But  my  persuasions  were  vain,  the  mind  could  not  be 
bent  from  its  natural  inclination."  "As  to  real  flesh 
and  blood,"  Shelley  wrote  to  Gisborne,  "  you  know  that 
I  do  not  deal  in  these  articles ;  you  might  as  well  go  to 
a  gin-shop  for  a  leg  of  mutton,  as  expect  anything 
human  or  earthly  from  me."  Still  his  loves,  in  fact, 
were  human  enough,  though  in  verse  they  were 
sublimated  into  faint  and  fragrant  essences  not  of  this 
world.  "I  think,"  Shelley  says,  "one  is  always  in  love 
with  something  or  other  ;  the  error — and  I  confess  it  is 
not  easy  for  spirits  in  flesh  and  blood  to  avoid  it- 
consists  in  seeking  in  a  mortal  image  the  likeness  of 
what  is,  perhaps,  eternal."  The  story  of  Emilia  Viviani 
is  entirely  human  :  hardly  human  is  the  invitation,  in 


110  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Epipsychidion,  to  a  Paradise  earthly  indeed,  but  not 
to  be  found  on  earth. 

Emily, 

A  ship  is  floating  in  the  harbour  now, 
A  wind  is  hovering  o'er  the  mountain's  brow. 
There  is  a  path  on  the  sea's  azure  floor, 
No  keel  has  ever  ploughed  that  path  before ; 
The  halcyons  brood  around  the  foamless  isles  ; 
The  treacherous  Ocean  has  forsworn  its  wiles ; 
The  merry  mariners  are  bold  and  free  : 
Say,  my  heart's  sister,  wilt  thou  sail  with  me  ? 
Our  bark  is  as  an  albatross  whose  nest 
Is  a  far  Eden  of  the  purple  East ; 
And  we  between  her  wings  will  sit,  while  Night 
And  Day,  and  Storm,  and  Calm,  pursue  their  flight, 
Our  ministers,  along  the  boundless  Sea, 
Treading  each  other's  heels,  unheededly. 
It  is  an  isle  under  Ionian  skies, 
Beautiful  as  a  wreck  of  Paradise, 
And,  for  the  harbours  are  not  safe  and  good, 
This  land  would  have  remained  a  solitude 
But  for  some  pastoral  people  native  there, 
Who  from  the  Elysian,  clear,  and  golden  air 
Draw  the  last  spirit  of  the  age  of  gold, 
Simple  and  spirited  ;  innocent  and  bold. 
The  blue  JEgean  girds  this  chosen  home, 
With  ever-changing  sound  and  light  and  foam 
Kissing  the  sifted  sands  and  caverns  hoar ; 
And  all  the  winds  wandering  along  the  shore 
Undulate  with  the  undulating  tide  : 
There  are  thick  woods  where  sylvan  forms  abide ; 
And  many  a  fountain,  rivulet,  and  pond, 
As  clear  as  elemental  diamond, 
Or  serene  morning  air ;  and  far  beyond, 
The  mossy  tracks  made  by  the  goats  and  deer 
(Which  the  rough  shepherd  treads  but  once  a  year), 
Pierce  into  glades,  caverns,  and  bowers,  and  halls 
Built  round  with  ivy,  which  the  waterfalls 


SHELLEY  111 

Illumining,  with  sound  that  never  fails 
Accompany  the  noonday  nightingales  ; 
And  all  the  place  is  peopled  with  sweet  airs  ; 
The  light  clear  element  which  the  isle  wears 
Is  heavy  with  the  scent  of  lemon-flowers, 
Which  floats  like  mist  laden  with  unseen  showers, 
And  falls  upon  the  eyelids  like  faint  sleep ; 
And  from  the  moss  violets  and  jonquils  peep, 
And  dart  their  arrowy  odour  through  the  brain, 
Till  you  might  faint  with  that  delicious  pain. 

Shelley's  landscapes  are  seldom  more  terrestrial  than 
this  enchanted  island.  Shelley,  unlike  Wordsworth, 
scarcely  ever  writes  "  with  his  eye  on  the  object."  The 
Lines  written  among  the  Euganean  Hills  are  his  closest 
approach  to  direct  study  of  landscape. 

Ay,  many  flowering  islands  lie 

In  the  waters  of  wide  Agony  : 

To  such  a  one  this  morn  was  led, 

My  bark  by  soft  winds  piloted  : 

'Mid  the  mountains  Euganean 

I  stood  listening  to  the  paean, 

With  which  the  legioned  rooks  did  hail 

The  sun's  uprise  majestical ; 

Gathering  round  with  wings  all  hoar, 

Through  the  dewy  mist  they  soar 

Like  gray  shades,  till  the  eastern  heaven 

Bursts,  and  then,  as  clouds  of  even, 

Flecked  with  fire  and  azure,  lie 

In  the  unfathomable  sky, 

So  their  plumes  of  purple  grain, 

Starred  with  drops  of  golden  rain, 

Gleam  above  the  sunlight  woods, 

As  in  silent  multitudes 

On  the  morning's  fitful  gale 

Thro  the  broken  mist  they  sail, 


112  POETS'  COUNTRY 

And  the  vapours  cloven  and  gleaming 
Follow  down  the  dark  steep  streaming, 
Till  all  is  bright,  and  clear,  and  still, 
Round  the  solitary  hill. 

Beneath  is  spread  like  a  green  sea 
The  waveless  plain  of  Lombardy, 
Bounded  by  the  vaporous  air, 
Islanded  by  cities  fair  ; 
Underneath  day's  azure  eyes 
Ocean's  nursling,  Venice  lies, 
A  peopled  labyrinth  of  walls, 
Amphitrite's  destined  halls, 
Which  her  hoary  sire  now  paves 
With  his  blue  and  beaming  waves. 
Lo  !  the  sun  upsprings  behind, 

Broad,  red,  radiant,  half-reclined 

On  the  level  quivering  line 

Of  the  waters  crystalline  ; 

And  before  that  chasm  of  light, 

As  within  a  furnace  bright, 

Column,  tower,  and  dome,  and  spire, 

Shine  like  obelisks  of  fire, 

Pointing  with  inconstant  motion 

From  the  altar  of  dark  ocean 

To  the  sapphire-tinted  skies  ; 

As  the  flames  of  sacrifice 

From  the  marble  shrines  did  rise, 

As  to  pierce  the  dome  of  gold 

Where  Apollo  spoke  of  old. 

Shelley's  last  home,  if  this  wandering  spirit  could  be 
said  to  have  a  home,  was  the  Villa  Magni  on  the  bay  of 
Lerici ;  behind  lie  the  Carrara  hills.  "  Went  ashore  to 
see  some  fishermen  drag  their  nets,"  writes  Williams, 
when  he  and  Shelley  visited  the  place  in  search  of  a 
house.  I,  too,  remember  seeing  the  fishers  drag  their 


BISHAM   ABBEY 

Bisham  Abbey,  near  Great  Marlow,  where  Shelley  lived 
when  he  wrote  the  Revolt  of  Islam,  in  his  boat  Mrs.  Shelley 
states,  while  it  floated  under  the  beech  groves  of  Bisham. 


SHELLEY  113 

nets,  and  rejoice  in  the  capture  of  a  few  small  fish,  on 
the  shingle  under  the  Villa  Magni :  in  stormy  weather  the 
waves  break  against  the  terrace  of  the  gaunt,  melancholy 
dwelling.  Beside  the  bay  Shelley  wrote  the  lines  which 
follow  ;  they  are  rather  concerned  with  his  own  emotions 
when  "  she  left  me  "  ("  she  "  was  perhaps  Jane  Williams) 
than  with  the  watery  plain  under  his  eyes.  But  he  notes 
one  local  detail :  like  Quintus  Smyrnaeus,  so  long  ago, 
he  saw  the  fisher's  lamp,  luring  fish  to  be  speared. 

She  left  me  at  the  silent  time 

When  the  moon  had  ceased  to  climb 

The  azure  path  of  Heaven's  steep, 

And  like  an  albatross  asleep, 

Balanced  on  her  wings  of  light, 

Hovered  in  the  purple  night, 

Ere  she  sought  her  ocean  nest 

In  the  chambers  of  the  West. 

She  left  me,  and  I  stayed  alone 

Thinking  over  every  tone 

Which,  though  silent  to  the  ear, 

The  enchanted  heart  could  hear, 

Like  notes  which  die  when  born,  but  still 

Haunt  the  echoes  of  the  hill ; 

And  feeling  ever — oh,  too  much  ! — 

The  soft  vibration  of  her  touch, 

As  if  her  gentle  hand  even  now, 

Lightly  trembled  on  my  brow ; 

And  thus,  although  she  absent  were, 

Memory  gave  me  all  of  her 

That  even  Fancy  dares  to  claim : — 

Her  presence  had  made  weak  and  tame 

All  passions,  and  I  lived  alone 

In  the  time  which  is  our  own ; 

The  past  and  future  were  forgot, 

As  they  had  been,  and  would  be,  not. 


114  POETS'  COUNTRY 

But  soon,  the  guardian  angel  gone, 

The  daemon  reassumed  his  throne 

In  my  faint  heart.     I  dare  not  speak 

My  thoughts,  but  thus  disturbed  and  weak 

I  sat  and  saw  the  vessels  glide 

Over  the  ocean  bright  and  wide, 

Like  spirit-winged  chariots  sent 

O'er  some  serenest  element 

For  ministrations  strange  and  far ; 

As  if  to  some  Elysian  star 

Sailed  for  drink  to  medicine 

Such  sweet  and  bitter  pain  as  mine. 

And  the  wind  that  winged  their  flight 

From  the  land  came  fresh  and  light, 

And  the  scent  of  winged  flowers, 

And  the  coolness  of  the  hours 

Of  dew,  and  sweet  warmth  left  by  day, 

Were  scattered  o'er  the  twinkling  bay. 

And  the  fisher  with  his  lamp 

And  spear,  about  the  low  rocks  damp 

Crept,  and  struck  the  fish  which  came 

To  worship  the  delusive  flame. 

Too  happy  they,  whose  pleasure  sought 

Extinguishes  all  senses  and  thought 

Of  the  regret  that  pleasure  leaves, 

Destroying  life  alone,  not  peace ! 

Shelley's  genius  was  ever  seeking  to  lose  itself  in  the 
cosmos,  as  the  Neo-Platonists  strove  to  lose  themselves 
in  God.  Almost  his  last  lines  appear  to  prophesy  his  own 
fate : 

The  breath  whose  might  I  have  invoked  in  song 
Descends  on  me  ;  my  spirit's  bark  is  driven 

Far  from  the  shore,  far  from  the  trembling  throng 
Whose  sails  were  never  to  the  tempest  given ; 
The  massy  earth  and  sphered  skies  are  riven ! 

I  am  borne  darkly,  fearfully,  afar ! 


SHELLEY  115 

Whilst,  burning  through  the  inmost  veil  of  heaven, 
The  soul  of  Adonais,  like  a  star, 
Beacons  from  the  abode  where  the  Eternal  are. 

He  was  "lost  in  the  light  and  the  night  of  the  sea." 

Visiting  Villa  Magna,  long  ago,  I  went  into  the  dark 
wood  on  the  cliff  to  the  left  hand  of  the  house.  The 
day  was  still  and  grey ;  there  came  a  rustling  in  the 
tree- tops,  and  a  great  sea-bird  flew  forth,  like  the  spirit 
of  Shelley,  to  the  sea.  Not  in  houses  built  by  man,  not 
among  "  the  labours  of  men  and  oxen,"  not  in  any  human 
affection,  not  in  any  system  of  faith  or  of  denial,  could 
the  homeless  heart  of  Shelley  find  repose.  His  "  dwell- 
ing is  the  light  of  setting  suns," — it  is  of  himself  that  he 
seems  to  speak  in  his  lament  for  Keats. 

He  is  made  one  with  Nature :  there  is  heard 

His  voice  in  all  her  music,  from  the  moan 
Of  thunder  to  the  song  of  night's  sweet  bird ; 

He  is  a  presence  to  be  felt  and  known 

In  darkness  and  in  light,  from  herb  and  stone, 
Spreading  itself  where'er  that  Power  may  move 

Which  has  withdrawn  his  being  to  its  own ; 
Which  wields  the  world  with  never-wearied  love, 
Sustains  it  from  beneath,  and  kindles  it  above. 

He  is  a  portion  of  the  loveliness 

Which  once  he  made  more  lovely :  he  doth  bear 
His  part,  while  the  One  Spirit's  plastic  stress 

Sweeps  through  the  dull  dense  world,  compelling  there 

All  new  successions  to  the  forms  they  wear ; 
Torturing  the  unwilling  dross  that  checks  its  flight 

To  its  own  likeness,  as  each  mass  may  bear ; 
And  bursting  in  its  beauty  and  its  might 
From  trees  and  beasts  and  men  into  the  heaven's  light. 


MILTON 

WHAT  blindness  must  have  meant  to  Milton  can  only 
be  fully  understood  by  those  who  have  followed  closely 
the  Nature-pictures  painted  by  him  before  he  lost  his 
sight  and  compared  them  with  their  originals.  We 
have  only  to  go  to  the  scenes  represented  by  them, 
and  which  suggested  and  inspired  them,  to  see  that  at 
one  time  at  least  Nature  must  have  been  to  him  what 
it  was  to  Dante  and  Tennyson,  that  "  felt  in  the  heart 
and  felt  along  the  blood,"  he  studied  it  with  minute 
and  loving  accuracy.  To  him,  as  to  the  Ancients  and 
to  Shakespeare,  its  phenomena  were  always,  no  doubt, 
of  subordinate  interest  and  importance  to  man  and 
human  life,  and  from  the  very  first  the  world  of  books 
was  with  him  as  near  and  intimate  as  the  world  of 
Nature.  As  life  advanced,  the  more  potent  influences 
gradually  intensifying  seem  so  much  to  have  prevailed 
that  the  natural  images  impressed  on  his  mind  as  he 
wandered  among  the  scenes  of  his  youth  appear  to 
have  become  almost  obliterated.  No  one  can  read 
Paradise  Lost  without  being  struck  by  the  clairvoyant 

116 


CHALFONT  ST.    GILES,   BUCKS 

An  English  pastoral  scene  ;  shows  Milton's  cottage,  to 
which  he  retired  during  the  Great  Plague  of  London.  He 
had  at  that  time  written  Paradise  Lost,  and  it  is  said,  by  his 
secretary  Elwood  the  Quaker,  he  here  wrote  Paradise 
Regained. 


MILTON  117 

power  with  which  his  memory  recalls — and  recalls  with 
the  minutest  particularity — all  that  the  vast  range  of 
his  early  reading  had  imprinted  on  it.  Out  of  every 
nook  and  corner  of  ancient  and  modern  literature  the 
veriest  trifles  spring  to  its  summons.  In  antiquities 
and  topography  not  a  detail,  however  recondite  or 
minute,  seems  to  escape  it.  We  have  only  to  turn  to 
the  description  of  the  heathen  deities  and  their  habitats 
in  the  First  Book  of  Paradise  Lost,  to  the  map  of  the 
world  in  the  Eleventh  Book,  to  the  pictures  of  the 
Eastern  world,  of  ancient  Rome  and  of  the  Roman 
dominions,  and  of  ancient  Athens,  in  the  Third  and 
Fourth  Books  of  Paradise  Regained  for  illustrations. 
But  in  his  descriptions  of  Nature  all  this  particularity 
disappears.  Most  of  the  Eden  scenes  are  rather  com- 
piled reminiscences  of  the  Greek,  Roman,  and  Italian 
poets  than  pictures  recalled  from  what  he  had  seen. 
All  that  seems  to  have  remained  to  him  of  early  experi- 
ences is  the  general  impression  made  by  them :  in  no 
touch  is  there  any  indication  that  the  eye  of  memory, 
so  to  speak,  was  on  the  object  recalled.  Take  the  fol- 
lowing : — 

Now  came  still  Evening  on,  and  Twilight  gray 
Had  in  her  sober  livery  all  things  clad : 
Silence  accompanied ;  for  beast  and  bird, 
They  to  their  grassy  couch,  these  to  their  nests 
Were  slunk,  all  but  the  wakeful  nightingale, 
She  all  night  long  her  amorous  descant  sung : 
Silence  was  pleased :  now  glowed  the  firmament 
With  living  sapphires :  Hesperus,  that  led 
The  starry  host,  rode  brightest,  till  the  moon 


118  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Rising  in  clouded  majesty,  at  length 
Apparent  queen,  unveiled  her  peerless  light 
And  o'er  the  dark  her  silver  mantle  threw. 

Par.  Lost,  Book  IV. 

— exquisite,  and  very  far  indeed  from  falsetto,  but 
epideictic  and  informed  rather  by  imagination  than  by 
memory.  In  the  following  the  last  touch  no  doubt 
recorded  what  he  had  both  felt  and  witnessed  : — 

As,  when  from  mountain-tops  the  dusky  clouds 
Ascending,  while  the  North-wind  sleeps,  o'erspread 
Heaven's  cheerful  face,  the  louring  element 
Scowls  o'er  the  darkened  landskip  snow  or  shower, 
If  chance  the  radiant  sun,  with  farewell  sweet, 
Extend  his  evening  beam,  the  fields  revive, 
The  birds  their  notes  renew,  and  bleating  herds 
Attest  their  joy,  that  hill  and  valley  rings. 

Idem,  Book  II. 

One  passage  there  is  in  Paradise  Lost  in  which  he 
did  no  doubt  draw  directly  from  early  associations  and 
from  what  they  recalled,  and  in  which  his  love  for  the 
country  scenes  familiar  to  him  in  his  youth  finds 
enthusiastic  expression : — 

As  one  who,  long  in  populous  city  pent, 

Where  houses  thick  and  sewers  annoy  the  air, 

Forth  issuing  on  a  summer's  morn,  to  breathe 

Among  the  pleasant  villages  and  farms 

Adjoined,  from  each  thing  met  conceives  delight — 

The  smell  of  grain  or  tedded  grass,  or  kine 

Or  dairy,  each  rural  sight,  each  rural  sound. 

Idem,  Book  IX. 

Perhaps  it  is  not  fanciful  to  suppose  that  the 
following  passage,  which  in  precision  of  detail  stands 


MILTON  119 

alone  in  his  great  Epic,  was  a  reminiscence  of  what 
met  his  view  in  his  wanderings  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  Horton  or  of  Forest  Hill;  certainly  it  finds  in  its 
chief  features  its  counterpart  in  Cooper's  Hill  as  it  is 
seen  on  the  Datchet  road,  or  at  Forest  Hill,  where  it 
looks  towards  Shotover  :  — 

A  rural  mound,  the  champaign  head 
Of  a  steep  wilderness,  whose  hairy  sides 
With  thicket  overgrown,  grotesque  and  wild, 
Access  denied  :  and  overhead  upgrew 
Insuperable  height  of  loftiest  shade, 
Cedar,  and  pine,  and  fir,  and  branching  palm, 
A  sylvan  scene,  and,  as  the  ranks  ascend, 
Shade  above  shade,  a  woody  theatre 
Of  stateliest  view.  Par  ^  Book  Iy 


But  to  come  to  the  scenery  which  was  undoubtedly 
painted  by  him  in  L'  Allegro  and  77  Penseroso,  in 
Comus  and  in  Arcades,  and  which  inspired  much  of 
these  poems. 

In  Lord  Teignmouth's  Life  of  Sir  William  Jones 
there  is  a  very  interesting  letter  written  by  him  in 
September  1769  to  Lady  Spencer,  in  which,  after 
quoting  a  passage  from  II  Penseroso  which  will  be 
given  directly,  he  tells  her  how  he  had  identified  the 
description  with  what  he  saw  at  Forest  Hill,  near 
Oxford,  where  it  will  be  remembered  Milton's  first  wife 
lived,  and  where  he  married  her. 

It  was  neither  the  proper  season  of  the  year  nor  the  time  of 
day  to  hear  all  the  rural  sounds  and  see  all  the  objects  mentioned, 
but  by  a  pleasing  concurrence  of  circumstances  we  were  saluted 
on  our  approach  to  the  village  with  the  music  of  the  mower  and 


120  POETS'  COUNTRY 

his  scythe :  we  saw  the  ploughman  intent  upon  his  labour  and  the 
milkmaid  returning  from  her  cows.  As  we  ascended  the  hill  the 
variety  of  beautiful  objects,  the  agreeable  stillness,  and  the  natural 
simplicity  of  the  whole  scene  gave  us  the  highest  pleasure.  We 
at  length  reached  the  spot  whence  Milton  undoubtedly  took  most 
of  his  images.  It  is  on  the  top  of  the  hill  from  which  there  is  a 
most  extensive  prospect  on  all  sides :  the  distant  hills  which  seem 
to  support  the  clouds,  the  villages  and  turrets,  partly  shaded  with 
trees  of  the  finest  verdure  and  partly  raised  above  the  groves  that 
surround  them ;  the  dark  plains  and  meadows  of  a  greyish  colour, 
where  the  sheep  were  feeding  at  large ;  in  short,  the  view  of  the 
stream  and  rivers  convinced  us  that  there  was  not  a  single  useless 
or  idle  word  in  the  above-mentioned  description,  but  that  it  was 
a  most  exact  and  lively  representation  of  Nature.  ...  It  must 
not  be  omitted  that  the  groves  near  the  village  are  famous  for 
nightingales.  Most  of  the  cottage  windows  are  overgrown  with 
sweet-briars  and  honeysuckles. 

If  we  suppose,  as  it  generally  is  supposed,  that 
Milton's  intimate  acquaintance  with  Forest  Hill  did 
not  begin  till  his  visit  there  in  the  spring  of  1643, 
when  he  married  Mary  Powell,  while  L?  Allegro, 
II  Penseroso,  Comus,  and  Arcades  were  almost  certainly 
written  between  1632  and  1635,  when  he  was  at  Horton 
in  Buckinghamshire,  we  must  naturally  conclude  that 
Sir  William  Jones  was  mistaken  in  identifying  the 
scenery  of  this  place  with  that  described  in  the  poems. 
And  yet  he  may  be  right,  after  all.  We  know  from 
legal  documents  that  there  had  been  business  relations 
between  Milton's  father  and  the  Powells  as  early  as 
1627,  when  Milton  was  in  the  third  year  of  his  residence 
at  Cambridge.  It  is  quite  possible  that  he  visited  the 
Powells  more  than  once  during  the  vacations,  and  that 


MILTON'S   COTTAGE   AND   GARDEN, 
CHALFONT   ST.    GILES 

A  fine  specimen,  in  excellent  preservation,  of  the  cottage 
of  his  period.  Professor  Masson  states  that  Milton  always 
lived  in  a  garden-house  surrounded  hy  flowers,  even  during 
his  blindness. 

O  dark,  dark,  dark,  amid  the  blaze  of  noon  ! 

S/nnson  Agonistes. 


MILTON  121 

his  marriage  with  Mary  Powell  was  not  a  sudden 
arrangement,  but  was  the  result  of  an  attachment 
formed  in  her  childhood  and  confirmed  by  frequent 
visits  to  her  home.  What,  therefore,  does  directly 
recall  Forest  Hill  and  its  neighbourhood  in  these  poems 
may  have  been,  as  Sir  William  Jones  conjectured, 
actually  suggested  by  them.  On  this  point,  however, 
it  is  impossible  to  speak  with  any  confidence,  for  there 
is  little  if  anything  to  differentiate  the  characteristic 
features  of  Forest  Hill  from  the  characteristic  features 
of  Horton  except  the  presence  of  uplands  and  hills. 

The  hamlet  at  which  Milton  resided  after  leaving 
Cambridge,  and  where  he  passed  nearly  six  of  the  most 
critical,  and  certainly  the  happiest,  years  of  his  life,  is 
about  four  miles  from  Eton.  It  lies  between  Colnbrook 
on  the  north,  Wraysbury  on  the  south,  Middlesex  on 
the  east,  and  that  part  of  Stoke  Pogis  which  looks 
toward  Datchet  and  Windsor  on  the  west.  As  you 
enter  the  hamlet  from  the  Datchet  road,  the  first  object 
which  strikes  you  is  a  noble  elm,  standing  solitary  on 
what  in  Milton's  time  was  the  village  green,  but  which 
is  now  the  centre  of  a  space  where  three  roads  meet. 
On  the  right,  as  you  proceed  up  the  straggling,  thinly- 
populated  village,  you  pass  Horton  Cottage,  which 
abuts  on  the  road,  and  Horton  Manor  with  its  well- 
wooded  park  standing  back  some  way  from  the  road. 
A  few  yards  farther  on  you  come  to  the  churchyard, 
which  is  surrounded  on  all  sides  by  stately  elm  trees 
picturesquely  variegated  by  pines  and  other  trees, 


122  POETS'  COUNTRY 

conspicuous  amongst  which  is  a  fir  tree  thickly  mantled 
with  ivy.  As  you  enter  the  churchyard,  you  see  on 
the  left  two  ancient  yew  trees  long  preceding  Milton's 
time,  objects  on  which  his  eyes  must  often  have  rested. 
A  straight  path  takes  you  into  the  church,  which  has  a 
square  tower  with  walls  chequered  with  flints,  and 
brickwork  once  picturesquely  covered  with  ivy  but  now 
bare  and  bald.  Within  the  main  porch  there  is  a  fine 
old  Norman  arch,  within  the  church  a  nave  with  two 
aisles  and  a  chancel,  between  them  short  circular 
columns  supporting  arches.  Filling  the  exact  centre  of 
the  chancel  and  directly  fronting  the  Communion  Table 
is  a  plain,  blue,  flat  stone  inscribed  with  the  words : 

Here  lyeth  the  Body  of  Sara 
Milton  the  wife  of  John  Milton 
who  died  the  3rd  of  April  1637. 

This  marks  the  resting-place  of  the  poet's  mother. 
Leaving  the  church  and  continuing  our  way  through 
the  village,  we  pass  on  the  left  Berkyn  Manor,  a 
glaringly  modern  house  standing  surrounded  by  trees 
and  about  two  hundred  yards  from  the  road.  On  the 
site  now  occupied  by  its  vestibule  and  front  portion 
stood  Milton's  house,  of  which  not  so  much  as  a  stone 
remains.  It  is  in  passing  over  the  bridge  which  spans 
two  branches  of  the  river  Coin,  about  five  hundred  yards 
beyond  Berkyn  Manor,  in  the  view  from  the  garden  of 
the  parsonage  at  the  other  end  of  the  village,  in  the 
view  on  the  road  to  Colnbrook,  and  in  the  general 
features  of  the  place  and  its  surroundings,  particularly 


MILTON  123 

in  its  wealth  of  woodland  and  pasturage  and  its 
association  with  rustic  and  agricultural  pursuits,  that 
we  realise  how  faithfully  its  features  are  portrayed  by 
Milton.  In  one  of  the  Prolusiones  Oratoriae,  Academic 
exercises  written  by  him  when  at  Cambridge,  he  has  re- 
corded his  delight  in  such  scenes,  the  passage  unmistak- 
ably referring  to  a  summer  vacation  spent  at  Horton. 

And  I  myself  call  to  witness  the  groves  and  rivers  and  beloved 
village  elms  under  which  I  joyfully  remember  that  during  the  last 
past  summer  I  had  the  utmost  delight  with  the  Muses :  where 
methinks  among  rural  scenes  and  remote  glades  I  could  have 
silently  grown  up  and  vegetated. 

The  scene  along  the  road  to  Colnbrook,  with  its 
flat  landscape  of  pasture  and  ploughland  intersected  by 
runnels  of  water,  and  the  scene  from  the  parsonage 
garden  with  Windsor  in  the  distance,  are  evidently  the 
inspiration  of  these  lines  : — 

Sometime  walking,  not  unseen, 
By  hedgerow  elms,  on  hillocks  green, 
Right  against  the  eastern  gate 
Where  the  great  Sun  begins  his  state, 
Rob'd  in  flames  and  amber  light, 
The  clouds  in  thousand  liveries  dight ; 
While  the  ploughman,  near  at  hand 
Whistles  o'er  the  furrowed  land, 
And  the  milkmaid  singeth  blythe, 
And  the  mower  whets  his  scythe, 

Straight  mine  eye  hath  caught  now  pleasures, 
While  the  landscape  round  it  measures  : 
Russet  lawns  and  fallows  gray, 
Where  the  nibbling  flocks  do  stray ; 


124  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Meadows  trim,  with  daisies  pied, 
Shallow  brooks  and  rivers  wide  ; 
Towers  and  battlements  it  sees 
Bosomed  high  in  tufted  trees. 

While  the  preceding  lines — 

Oft  listening  how  the  hounds  and  horn 
Cheerly  rouse  the  slumbering  Morn, 
From  the  side  of  some  hoar  hill, 
Through  the  high  wood  echoing  shrill, 

recall  a  scene  with  which  every  one  in  Horton  is  familiar 
even  now,  when  the  royal  huntsmen  in  Windsor  Park 
are  out.  Neither  at  Horton  nor  at  Forest  Hill  had  he 
to  go  far  to  find 

Arched  walks  of  twilight  groves 

And  shadows  brown,  that  Sylvan  loves, 

Of  pine,  or  monumental  oak, 

Where  the  rude  axe,  with  heaved  stroke, 

Was  never  heard  the  nymphs  to  daunt, 

Or  fright  them  from  their  hallowed  haunt. 

At  neither  place  was  there,  it  is  true,  either 

A  wide-watered  shore 
Swinging  slow  with  sullen  roar ; 

or, 

Mountains,  on  whose  barren  breast 
The  labouring  clouds  do  often  rest. 

Other  familiar  features  at  Horton  would  be 

The  folded  flocks,  penned  in  their  wattled  cotes  .  .  . 
Or  whistle  from  the  lodge,  or  village  cock 
Count  the  night-watches  to  his  feathery  dames ; 

There,  too,  are  to-day 

The  rushy-fringed  bank 
Where  grows  the  willow  and  the  ozier  dank ; 


MILTON  125 

The  valleys  low,  where  the  mild  whispers  use 

Of  shades,  and  wanton  winds,  and  gushing  brooks ; 

and 

The  shady  roof 
Of  branching  elm  star-proof; 

but  above  all  the  nightingale.  Horton  is  one  of  its 
favourite  haunts,  and  no  doubt  the  following  is,  like  the 
exquisite  sonnet  to  the  Nightingale,  but  the  record  of  a 
frequent  experience  during  his  residence  there  : — 

Sweet  bird,  that  shunnest  the  noise  of  folly, 
Most  musical,  most  melancholy ! 
Thee,  chantress,  oft,  the  woods  among, 
I  woo,  to  hear  thy  even-song ; 
And,  missing  thee,  I  walk  unseen 
On  the  dry,  smooth-shaven  green, 
To  behold  the  wandering  Moon, 
Riding  near  her  highest  noon, 
Like  one  that  had  been  led  astray 
Through  the  heaven's  wide  pathless  way, 
And  oft,  as  if  her  head  she  bowed, 
Stooping  through  a  fleecy  cloud. 

The  scene  of  this  was,  in  all  probability,  Horton 
Park,  just  as  that  of  the  Sonnet  was,  we  cannot  but 
feel  certain,  his  father's  garden.  From  the  windows  of 
that  house  almost  certainly  festooned  with 

The  sweet-briar  and  the  vine, 
Or  the  twisted  eglantine, 

he  could 

Hear  the  lark  begin  his  flight, 
And,  singing,  startle  the  dull  night, 
From  his  watch-tower  in  the  skies, 
Till  the  dappled  dawn  doth  rise ; 


126  POETS'  COUNTRY 

while  a  few  paces  off 

The  cock,  with  lively  din, 
Scatters  the  rear  of  darkness  thin  ; 
And  to  the  stack,  on  the  barn  door, 
Stoutly  struts  his  dame  before. 

Nor,  later  in  the  day,  would  he  have  far  to  go  for  the 

original  of — 

Hard  by,  a  cottage  chimney  smokes, 

From  betwixt  two  aged  oaks, 

Where  Corydon  and  Thyrsis,  met, 

Are  at  their  savoury  dinner  set 

Of  herbs,  and  other  country  messes, 

Which  the  neat-handed  Phyllis  dresses; 

And  then  in  haste  her  bower  she  leaves, 

With  Thestylis  to  bind  the  sheaves ; 

Or,  if  the  earlier  season  lead, 

To  the  tanned  haycock  in  the  mead. 

Certainly  if  not  at  Horton,  at  Forest  Hill  he  might 
often  have  seen  the  original  of — 

Sometimes,  with  secure  delight, 
The  upland  hamlets  will  invite, 
When  the  merry  bells  ring  round, 
And  the  jocund  rebecks  sound 
To  many  a  youth  and  many  a  maid 
Dancing  in  the  checkered  shade. 

No  better  commentary  indeed  on  L? Allegro  and  on 
//  Penseroso  could  possibly  be  found  than  would  be 
afforded  by  a  ramble  about  Horton  and  Forest  Hill,  for 
the  scenery  most  characteristic  of  both  places,  with 
touches,  no  doubt,  of  other  rural  haunts  beloved  in 
early  days  by  the  young  Milton,  simply  penetrates 
these  poems. 


INTERIOR   OF   MILTON'S   COTTAGE 

I  understand  this  room  and  fireplace  are  in  the  same 
condition  as  when  used  by  the  poet.  He  is  introduced  as 
if  dictating  Paradise  Regained.  -p.  S.  W. 


SIR  JOHN  DENHAM  &  "COOPER'S  HILL" 

SOME  two  years  before  Milton  gave  L?  Allegro,  II 
Penseroso,  Lyddas,  Arcades,  and  Comus  to  the  world, 
appeared  a  poem  the  merits  of  which  were  extra- 
ordinarily overrated  by  the  poets  and  critics  of  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  but  which  is 
certainly  of  some  historical  importance.  We  smile  now 
at  Pope's  "  Majestic  Denham  "  ;  at  such  a  eulogy  as 

On  Cooper's  Hill  eternal  wreaths  shall  grow, 

While  lasts  the  mountain  or  while  Thames  shall  flow ; 

at  such  a  compliment  as  is  implied  in  what  Sheffield 
says  of  a  poem,  " 'Tis  not  an  Iliad  or  a  Coopers  Hill "  ; 
or  in  what  Swift  says  : 

This  hill  may  keep  the  name  of  Drapier, 

In  spite  of  envy  flourish  still, 

And  Drapier's  vie  with  Cooper's  Hill ; 

and  at  Johnson's  absurd  exaltation  of  him  into  "  one  of 
the  fathers  of  our  poetry."  The  reason  for  this  estimate 
of  him  and  for  the  celebrity  of  his  poem  is  no  doubt 
correctly  explained  by  Johnson.  "  He  seems  to  have 

127 


128  POETS'  COUNTRY 

been,  at  least  among  us,  the  author  of  a  species  of 
composition  that  may  be  denominated  local  poetry,  of 
which  the  fundamental  subject  is  some  particular 
landscape,  to  be  poetically  described,  with  the  addition 
of  such  embellishments  as  may  be  supplied  by  historical 
retrospection  or  incidental  meditation."  And  certainly 
Denham  became  the  founder  of  a  long  dynasty  of  poets, 
who  with  various  modifications  took  his  experiment  for 
their  pattern  —  such  would  be  Garth's  Clare?nont, 
Tickell's  Oxford,  and  Pope's  Windsor  Forest,  in  which, 
as  in  Denham's  case,  description  is  made  predominant 
to  the  "  embellishments  "  referred  to  by  Johnson.  In- 
deed, Garth's  Claremont,  like  Tickell's  Kensington 
Garden,  is  rather  an  Ovidian  phantasy  than  a  descriptive 
poem.  Otway's  Winsdor  Castle  is  little  more  than  a 
panegyric  on  Charles  II.  and  James  II.  In  Dyer's 
Grongar  Hill,  John  Scott's  Am,well,  Jago's  Edgehitt, 
Charlotte  Smith's  Beachy  Head,  Langhorne's  Studley 
Park,  and  Crowe's  Lewesdon  Hill — a  poem  much  ad- 
mired by  Wordsworth — pure  description  predominates. 

Denham's  other  claims  to  notice  do  not  concern  us, 
and  we  must  confine  ourselves  to  Coopers  Hill.  It 
was  published  at  Oxford  on  the  eve  of  the  great  Civil 
War,  in  1643,  just  after  Denham,  who  was  a  staunch 
Royalist,  had  resigned  the  governorship  of  Farnham 
Castle  and  had  retreated  to  Oxford. 

To  understand  the  poem  we  should  make  our  way 
to  the  exact  site,  or  as  near  as  possible  to  the  exact  site, 
on  which  Denham  must  have  stood  as  he  contemplated 


THE  THAMES  AND  ETON  FROM  THE  TERRACE, 
WINDSOR  CASTLE 

Though  deep,  yet  clear,  though  gentle,  yet  not  dull, 
Strong,  without  rage  ;  without  o'erflowing  full, 

(DENHAM) 

perhaps  best  describes  the  river ;  but  other  views  than  that 
of  Cooper's  Hill  give  a  finer  idea  of  it  pictorially,  as  well 
as  its  surroundings ;  also  the  pictures  of  the  river  at 
Richmond,  Eton,  and  Bisham  bear  on  his  lines. 


SIR  JOHN   DENHAM  129 

the  scene  described  by  him.  This  is  not  difficult.  If 
we  pass  through  the  town  of  Egham  and,  ascending  the 
hill  for  a  few  hundred  yards,  take  the  first  turning  to 
the  right,  we  make  our  way  to  an  elevated  plateau. 
Following  the  right  -  hand  path  and  descending  a 
green  lane,  we  find  ourselves  at  what  is  locally 
known  as  the  "Look-Out"  at  the  back  of  Kingswood 
House.  Thence  we  have  a  glorious  view  of  the  whole 
valley  of  the  Thames,  the  vast  landscape  expanding 
before  our  eyes,  more  thickly  wooded,  probably,  than 
in  Denham's  time,  but  otherwise  unchanged.  Far 
away  to  the  left  a  towering  sombre  mass,  bulking  out 
from  green  foliage,  is  Windsor  Castle  ;  in  front  the  land- 
scape stretches  level  right  away  to  the  horizon  —  a 
variegated  panorama  of  scattered  clumps  of  trees,  sunlit 
meadows,  and  cornfields,  with  the  Thames  winding,  a 
silver  thread,  through  the  rich  tilth  and  boskage.  Below 
in  front  of  you,  stretching  along  left  and  right,  is 
Runnymede,  and  farther  to  the  left  Magna  Charta 
Island.  Not  far  from  Magna  Charta  Island,  on  the 
Bucks  side  of  the  river,  are  some  old  and  interesting 
ruins — portions  of  a  wall  with  windows  in  it  nearly 
hidden  by  masses  of  ivy — all  that  now  remains  of 
Ankerwyke  Priory.  This  was  a  small  nunnery  of 
the  order  of  St.  Benedict,  dedicated  to  St.  Mary 
Magdalen  and  founded  about  the  time  of  Henry  II. 
by  Sir  Gilbert  de  Montfichet  and  his  son  Richard. 
After  the  dissolution  of  the  Monasteries  the  house  and 

site  of  the  Priory  were,   in   1540,  granted  by  Henry 

K 


130  POETS'  COUNTRY 

VIII.  to  Andrew  Lord  Windsor,  and  a  mansion  was 
built  there  either  by  him  or  by  Sir  Thomas  Smith,  to 
whom  the  estate  came  in  1556,  after  reverting  to  the 
Crown.  This,  in  1805,  was  demolished,  and  the  present 
Ankerwyke  House  was  built.  Thus  one  of  the  features 
in  Denham's  landscape  disappeared.  It  may  be  noticed, 
in  passing,  that  in  the  grounds  of  Ankerwyke  is  a  noble 
old  yew  tree,  under  which — so  local  tradition  goes — 
Henry  VIII.  used  secretly  to  meet  Anne  Boleyn, 
before  he  married  her. 

Denham  begins  his  poem  with  what  he  allows  to  be 
a  flight  of  fancy,  namely,  the  view  of  London  and  of 
St.  Paul's,  which,  if  discernible,  could  only  be  dis- 
cernible in  the  way  he  describes  : — 

Through  untrac'd  ways  and  airy  paths  I  fly, 
More  boundless  in  my  fancy  than  my  eye — 
My  eye  which,  swift  as  thought,  contracts  the  space 
That  lies  between,  and  first  salutes  the  place 
Crown'd  with  that  sacred  pile,  so  vast,  so  high, 
That,  whether  'tis  a  part  of  earth  or  sky, 
Uncertain  seems,  and  may  be  thought  a  proud 
Aspiring  mountain,  or  descending  cloud. 

Then,  with  a  compliment  to  Charles  I.  and  Henrietta 
Maria,  he  turns  to  Windsor  : — 

Windsor  the  next  (where  Mars  with  Venus  dwells, 
Beauty  with  strength)  above  the  valley  swells 
Into  my  eye,  and  doth  itself  present 
With  such  an  easy  and  unforced  ascent, 
That  no  stupendous  precipice  denies 
Access,  no  horror  turns  away  our  eyes. 

He  then  goes  on  to  deal  with  the  historical  associations 


SIR  JOHN   DENHAM  131 

of  the  place,  resuming  his  description  with  Ankerwyke 
Priory : — 

But  my  fix'd  thoughts  my  wandering  eye  betrays, 
Viewing  a  neighbouring  hill,  whose  top  of  late 
A  chapel  crown'd,  till  in  the  common  fate 
The  adjoining  abbey  fell. 

Again  he  digresses  into  reflections  on  the  sacrilege 
involved  in  the  destruction  of  the  religious  houses,  re- 
covering not  ungracefully  the  thread  of  description  : — 

Parting  from  thence  'twixt  anger,  shame,  and  fear, 
These  for  what's  past  and  this  for  what's  too  near, 
My  eye,  descending  from  the  hill,  surveys 
Where  Thames  among  the  wanton  vallies  strays : 
Thames,  the  most  lov'd  of  all  the  Ocean's  sons 
By  his  old  sire,  to  his  embraces  runs ; 
Hasting  to  pay  his  tribute  to  the  sea, 
Like  mortal  life  to  meet  Eternity. 

Other  reflections  on  the  river  follow,  and  then, 
inserted  in  the  second  edition  of  the  poem,  comes  the 
justly  famous  apostrophe  and  aspiration  : — 

O,  could  I  flow  like  thee,  and  make  thy  stream 
My  great  example,  as  it  is  my  theme ! 
Though  deep,  yet  clear ;  though  gentle,  yet  not  dull ; 
Strong  without  rage,  without  o'erflowing,  full. 

He  then  goes  on  to  describe  and  comment  on  the 
curious  contrasted  features  of  the  scene — the  shaggy 
tree-thronged  hill,  the  calm  water  flowing  at  its  foot, 
and  Runnymede,  and  how  Nature  harmonises  all : — 

Wisely  she  knew  the  harmony  of  things, 
As  well  as  that  of  sounds,  from  discord  springs. 
Such  was  the  discord,  which  did  first  disperse 
Form,  order,  beauty  through  the  universe ; 


132  POETS'  COUNTRY 

While  dryness  moisture,  coldness  heat  resists, 
All  that  we  have,  and  what  we  are,  subsists  ; 
While  the  steep,  horrid  roughness  of  the  wood 
Strives  with  the  gentle  calmness  of  the  flood, 
Such  huge  extremes  when  Nature  doth  unite, 
Wonder  from  thence  results,  from  thence  delight. 
The  stream  is  so  transparent,  pure,  and  clear, 
That  had  the  self-enamoured  youth  gaz'd  here, 
So  fatally  deceived  he  had  not  been, 
While  he  the  bottom,  not  his  face  had  seen. 
But  his  proud  head  the  aiiy  mountain  hides 
Among  the  clouds ;  his  shoulders  and  his  sides 
A  shady  mantle  clothes ;  his  curled  brows 
Frown  on  the  gentle  stream,  which  calmly  flows, 
While  winds  and  storms  his  lofty  forehead  beat : 
The  common  fate  of  all  that's  high  or  great. 
Low  at  his  feet  a  spacious  plain  is  plac'd, 
Between  the  mountain  and  the  stream  embrac'd, 
Which  shade  and  shelter  from  the  hill  derives, 
While  the  kind  river  wealth  and  beauty  gives. 

Then  follows  a  very  animated  description  of  a  stag- 
hunt  at  the  foot  of  the  hill  in  Runnymede.  The  great 
transaction  of  which  this  meadow  was  the  scene  is  next 
referred  to,  and  with  some  reflections  very  pertinent  to 
the  critical  time  at  which  the  poem  was  composed,  it 
concludes. 

Nothing  could  illustrate  more  strikingly  the  treat- 
ment of  Nature  by  the  poets  of  the  Critical  school,  soon 
to  culminate  in  Dryden  and  Pope,  than  this  poem  with 
its  thin  perception  of  the  picturesque,  its  insensibility 
to  colour  and  charm,  its  absence  of  enthusiasm,  its 
complete  subordination  of  the  beauties  of  Nature  to 
ethical  and  political  reflection. 


WALLER,   COWLEY,   AND   DRYDEN 

WE  must  go  forward  to  Dry  den  to  find  a  poet  so 
utterly  indifferent  to  Nature  and  Nature's  works  as 
Waller.  There  is  scarcely  a  natural  image,  except  of 
the  most  commonplace  character,  to  be  found  in  his 
poetry.  Though  he  has  twice  celebrated  Penshurst,  he 
says  not  a  word  about  its  scenery  beyond  the  ridiculous 
remark  that  the  trees,  when  Dorothea  sits  down,  crowd 
bowing  in  a  circle  round  her.  There  is  a  touch  of 
sentiment  in  his — 

Fade,  flowers  !  fade.  Nature  will  have  it  so  ; 
'Tis  but  what  we  must  in  our  autumn  do ! 
And  as  your  leaves  lie  quiet  on  the  ground, 
The  loss  alone  by  those  who  lov'd  them  found ; 
So  in  the  grave  shall  we  as  quiet  lie. 

But  this,  commonplace  as  it  is,  is  paraphrased  from  the 
French.  His  only  descriptive  poem  is  St.  James's  Park, 
which,  like  Ben  Jonson's  Penshurst  and  Marvell's  Bil- 
borow  and  Appleton  House,  Dr.  Johnson  seems  to  have 
forgotten  when  he  attributed  to  Denham  the  intro- 
duction of  the  "local  poem"  into  English  literature. 

133 


134  POETS'  COUNTRY 

The  whole  poem  is  as  artificial  as  the  scene  it  describes, 
and  Waller  characteristically  avoids  dwelling  on  natural 
objects,  what  he  says  about  them  being  practically 
confined  to  the 

Young  trees  upon  the  banks 
Of  the  new  stream  appear  in  even  ranks ; 

to  the  fact  that  it  is 

With  a  border  of  rich  fruit-trees  crown' d, 
Whose  loaded  branches  hide  the  lofty  mound  ; 

and  to  the 

Living  gallery  of  aged  trees  ; 

Bold  sons  of  earth,  that  thrust  their  arms  so  high, 
As  if  once  more  they  would  invade  the  sky. 

Perhaps  his  instincts  as  a  sportsman  led  him  to  the 
only  vivid  natural  touch  in  the  whole  poem,  the  startled 
flight  of  some  wild-fowl : — 

Overhead  a  flock  of  new-sprung  fowl 
Hangs  in  the  air,  and  does  the  sun  control, 
Dark'ning  the  sky  ;  they  hover  o'er,  and  shroud 
The  wanton  sailors  with  a  feather'd  cloud. 

What  applies  to  Waller  most  certainly  does  not 
apply  to  his  younger  contemporary.  A  prominent 
place  among  English  poets  who  have  felt  the  power 
and  charm  of  Nature  must  certainly  be  assigned  to 
Cowley.  This,  indeed,  is  no  more  than  might  be 
expected  from  the  author  of  those  delightful  prose 
essays  on  Solitude,  Agriculture,  and  The  Garden.  In 
his  Elegy  on  the  death  of  his  Cambridge  friend,  William 


WALLER,  COWLEY,  AND   DRYDEN     135 

Hervey,  we  have  something  approaching  to  the  note  of 
Matthew  Arnold's  Thyrsis  anticipated  by  more  than  two 
centuries : — 

Ye  fields  of  Cambridge,  our  dear  Cambridge,  say, 
Have  ye  not  seen  us  walking  every  day  ? 
Was  there  a  tree  about  which  did  not  know 

The  love  betwixt  us  two  ? 
Henceforth,  ye  gentle  trees,  for  ever  fade, 

Or  your  sad  branches  darker  join, 

And  into  darksome  shades  combine, 
Dark  as  the  grave  wherein  my  friend  is  laid ! 

No  tuneful  birds  play  with  their  wonted  cheer, 

And  call  the  learned  youth  to  hear ; 

No  whistling  winds  through  the  glad  branches  fly  : 

But  all,  with  sad  solemnity 

Mute  and  unmoved  be, 
Mute  as  the  grave  wherein  my  friend  does  lie. 

His  Liber  Plantarum,  which  being  in  Latin  does 
not  concern  us,  shows  with  what  minute  attention  he 
had  studied  flowers,  and  how  he  delighted  in  the 
retreats  where  they  were  to  be  found.  The  greater 
part  of  his  poetry  treats  of  themes  into  which 
natural  description  could  not  very  well  enter,  and  like 
all  poets  whose  taste  had  been  formed  on  the  Latin 
classics,  he  did  not  intrude  such  descriptions.  But 
in  the  second  of  his  Odes  he  gives  the  rein  to  his 
enthusiasm  : — 

Give  me  a  river  which  doth  scorn  to  show 
An  added  beauty  ;  whose  clear  brow 
May  be  my  looking-glass  to  see 

What  my  face  is,  and  what  my  mind  should  be ! 


136  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Here  waves  call  waves,  and  glide  along  in  rank 
\nd  prattle  to  the  smiling  bank. 


Daisies,  the  first-born  of  the  teeming  spring, 
On  each  side  their  embroidery  bring ; 
Here  lilies  wash,  and  grow  more  white, 

And  daffodils,  to  see  themselves,  delight. 


Thus  I  would  waste,  thus  end,  my  careless  days ; 

And  robin  redbreasts,  whom  men  praise 

For  pious  birds,  should,  when  I  die, 
Make  both  my  monument  and  elegy. 

A  staunch  Royalist,  he  knew  little  rest  for  many 
years,  having  no  leisure  either  for  study  or  poetry. 
He  served  his  party  well,  but  was  poorly  rewarded, 
and,  soured  and  disappointed,  buried  himself  in  retire- 
ment, first  at  Barn  Elms  and  then  at  Chertsey.  Here 
he  wrote  his  essays,  and  the  poems  and  translations  in 
which  his  love  for  Nature  and  for  communion  with  it  is 
most  eloquently  displayed.  He  translated,  or,  to  speak 
more  correctly,  paraphrased  sympathetically  portions  of 
the  poems  in  which  Virgil,  Horace,  and  Martial  have 
sung  the  praises  of  country  life.  But  nothing  he 
paraphrased  exceeds  in  charm  his  own  expression  of 
what  Nature  was  to  him.  The  garden  and  grounds 
of  his  house,  which  were  on  the  level  of  the  meadows 
which  lay  in  the  midst  of  a  picturesque,  thickly-wooded 
district,  may  still  be  traced,  and  we  may  feel  pretty 
sure  that  it  was  in  this  delightful  retreat,  and  with 
reference  to  its  features,  that  he  wrote  : — 


WALLER,  COWLEY,  AND   DRYDEN     137 

Hail,  old  patrician  trees,  so  great  and  good ! 

Hail,  ye  plebeian  underwood ! 

Where  the  poetic  birds  rejoice, 
And  for  their  quiet  nests  and  plenteous  food 

Pay  with  their  grateful  voice. 

Hail,  the  poor  Muses'  richest  manor-seat ! 

Ye  country-houses,  and  retreat, 

Which  all  the  happy  gods  so  love, 
That  for  you  oft  they  quit  their  bright  and  great 
Metropolis  above. 

Here  Nature  does  a  house  for  me  erect, 

Nature,  the  wisest  architect, 

Who  those  fond  artists  does  despise 
That  can  the  fair  and  living  trees  neglect, 

Yet  the  dead  timber  prize. 

Here  let  me,  careless  arid  unthoughtful  lying, 
Hear  the  soft  winds  above  me  flying, 
With  all  their  wanton  boughs  dispute, 

And  the  more  tuneful  birds  to  both  replying, 
Nor  be  myself,  too,  mute. 

A  silver  stream  shall  roll  his  waters  near, 

Gilt  with  the  sunbeams  here  and  there : 
On  whose  enamell'd  bank  I'll  walk, 

And  see  how  prettily  they  smile,  and  hear 
How  prettily  they  talk. 

We  can  quite  understand  what  Pope  meant  when 
he  wrote  of  Cowley — 

Who  now  reads  Cowley  ?     If  he  pleases  yet, 
His  moral  pleases  not  his  pointed  wit. 
Forgot  his  Epic,  nay,  Pindaric  art, 
But  still  I  love  the  language  of  his  heart. 


138  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Could  Cowley  have  shaken  off  the  trammels  of 
the  metaphysical  school  and,  instead  of  aspiring  to  rival 
Pindar  and  Virgil,  contented  himself  with  the  expression 
of  his  own  natural  genius,  he  might  have  been  a  really 
charming  poet. 

In  passing  from  Cowley  to  Dryden,  we  pass  to  a 
poet  of  a  very  different  temper.  Of  the  beauties  of 
Nature  Dryden  appears  to  have  been  absolutely  in- 
sensible. If  I  am  not  mistaken,  there  is  only  one 
attempt  at  elaborate  Nature-painting  in  the  whole  of 
his  works,  and  it  is  a  passage  which  for  fustian  and 
falsetto  it  would  be  difficult  to  beat : — 

All  things  are  hush'd,  as  Nature's  self  lay  dead  ; 
The  mountains  seem  to  nod  their  drowsy  head ; 
The  little  birds,  in  dreams,  their  songs  repeat, 
And  sleeping  flowers  beneath  the  night-dew  sweat. 
Even  lust  and  envy  sleep. 

Indian  Emperor. 

It  is  remarkable  that  in  the  Epistle  in  Praise  of  a 
Country  Life  addressed  to  his  kinsman  John  Dryden, 
there  is  not  a  single  touch  of  natural  description. 
Wherever,  in  translating  or  paraphrasing  Virgil  or 
Chaucer,  he  has  to  deal  with  such  passages,  he  in- 
variably spoils  or  falsifies  them.  All  that  can  be 
said  for  him  is  that  in  one  or  two  places  he  stumbles 
on  a  graphic  touch,  as  in  the  Annus  Mirabilis, 
499-500  :— 

So  sicken  waning  moons  too  near  the  sun, 
And  blunt  their  crescents  on  the  edge  of  day. 


WALLER,  COWLEY,  AND  DRYDEN     139 

As  a  rule,  such  tawdry  rhetoric  as  the  following 
serves  his  turn  : — 

Above  our  shady  bowers 

The  creeping  jessamine  thrusts  her  fragrant  flowers  ; 
The  myrtle,  orange,  and  the  blushing  rose, 
With  bending  heaps  so  nigh  their  blooms  disclose, 
Each  seems  to  swell  the  flavour  which  the  other  blows  : 
By  these  the  peach,  the  guava,  and  the  pine, 
And,  creeping  'twixt  them  all,  the  mantling  vine 
Does  round  their  trunks  her  purple  clusters  twine. 

State  of  Innocence,  iii.  1 . 

Dryden's  indifference  to  inanimate  nature  is  the 
more  remarkable  because  his  pictures  of  animals  and 
their  experiences,  when  he  attempts  them,  are  often  as 
accurate  as  they  are  vivid,  as  in  the  following  in  the 
Annus  Mirabilis,  520-28  : 

So  have  I  seen  some  fearful  hare  maintain 
A  course,  till  tir'd,  before  the  dog  she  lay : 

Who,  stretch'd  behind  her,  pants  upon  the  plain, 
Past  power  to  kill,  as  she  to  get  away. 

With  his  loll'd  tongue  he  faintly  licks  his  prey ; 

His  warm  breath  blows  her  flix  up  as  she  lies ; 
She,  trembling,  creeps  upon  the  ground  away, 

And  looks  back  to  him  with  beseeching  eyes. 

Dryden,  like  Lucan  and  Juvenal,  was  pre-eminently 
a  rhetorician,  a  man  of  robust  but  somewhat  coarse 
temper,  to  whom  facts  and  truths  appealed  not  as  they 
affected  him  aesthetically,  but  as  they  affected  him 
intellectually  and  ethically.  Nature  was  to  him  what 
it  had  always  been  to  the  poets  of  the  school  to  which 
he  belongs,  and  of  which  in  our  literature  he  was  the 
typical  representative. 


THE  DESCRIPTIVE  POETRY  OF  THE 
EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

IF  we  take  a  comprehensive  view  of  the  poetry  dealing 
with  Nature-painting  during  the  eighteenth  century  in 
England  and  in  the  English  language,  it  will  be  con- 
venient to  regard  it  as  it  found  expression  during  what 
is  commonly  called  the  Augustan  Age,  that  is,  between 
1700  and  1745,  and  as  it  expressed  itself  between  that 
time  and  the  appearance  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads  in  1798. 
Its  landmarks  are  easily  discernible.  We  have  first 
the  purely  conventional  school  the  centre  of  which 
was  Pope,  prominent  members  of  which  were  Gay, 
John  Philips,  Ambrose  Philips,  Tickell,  and  Savage. 
The  model  of  Pope's  one  descriptive  poem,  Windsor 
Forest,  was  Denham's  Coopers  Hill  and  the  Mosella 
of  Ausonius.  Gay  followed  Pope,  adding  nothing. 
John  Philips  in  his  Cyder  imitated  Virgil's  Georgics, 
and  wrote  about  Nature  chiefly  because  Virgil  had 
written  about  it.  Ambrose  Philips  conceived  that  he 
was  imitating  Theocritus,  and  Tickell  and  Savage  were 
more  or  less  conventional  in  their  treatment  and 

140 


EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY   POETRY     141 

certainly  added  no  new  elements.  Lady  Anne  Win- 
chester has  been  singled  out  by  Wordsworth  for  special 
notice,  because  of  the  touches  of  vivid  realism  in  one 
of  her  poems,  The  Nocturnal  Reverie,  but  these  touches 
are  few  and  confined  to  that  poem.  But  the  Winter 
of  Thomson,  which,  appearing  in  1726,  was  followed 
by  the  other  Seasons  between  that  date  and  1730, 
struck  a  new  note,  and  initiated  the  most  important 
era  in  the  whole  history  of  Nature-description  in  verse. 
Before  the  work  was  completed  he  had  found  an 
imitator  in  Mallet,  whose  Excursion  appeared  in  1728, 
and  it  may  be  safely  said  that  half  the  purely  descriptive 
poetry  of  the  eighteenth  century  either  took  its  ply 
from  Thomson  or  was  more  or  less  affected  by  him. 
In  the  very  year  in  which  Thomson's  Winter  appeared, 
appeared  a  poem  heralding  the  advent  of  another 
descriptive  poet  who  had  as  little  in  common  as 
Thomson  had  with  the  conventional  school.  This 
poem  was  Grongar  Hill,  by  John  Dyer.  This  he 
afterwards  followed  with  the  Ruins  of  Rome  and  the 
Fleece.  In  the  Fleece  natural  description  was  sub- 
ordinate to  a  most  prosaic  theme,  but  Dyer  taken 
altogether  stands  with  Thomson  at  the  head  of  the 
descriptive  poets  in  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  But  in  the  very  midst  of  the  Augustan  Age 
an  important  note  had  been  struck,  if  struck  faintly. 
In  Parnell  as  the  author  of  the  Hymn  to  Contentment 
and  more  particularly  the  Night-Piece  on  Death,  and 
in  Matthew  Green,  we  catch  a  new  strain,  or  rather  a 


142  POETS'  COUNTRY 

variant  of  Milton's  note  in  L?  Allegro  and  //  Penseroso, 
but  which  in  any  case  anticipated  a  subsequent 
important  development  of  descriptive  poetry.  By 
Akenside  and  Armstrong,  in  both  of  whom  we  discern 
something  of  a  feeling  for  Nature,  natural  descrip- 
tion was,  as  with  their  classical  archetypes,  Lucretius 
and  Manilius,  purely  subordinate  to  their  themes 
and  didactic  purpose,  and  employed  only  as  em- 
broidery. 

After  the  death  of  Thomson  in  1748  we  find  a  great 
advance  in  descriptive  poetry.  Two  years  before  had 
appeared  the  Odes  of  Collins,  in  which  the  note  struck 
so  faintly  by  Parnell  and  Green  not  only  vibrated  in 
fullest  tone,  but  one  of  the  most  exquisite  varieties  of 
descriptive  poetry  was  fully  initiated.  With  the  Ode 
to  Evening  and  the  Ode  on  the  Death  of  Thomson, 
written  two  years  later,  what  Arnold  calls  natural 
magic  came  into  our  poetry.  Gray,  with  less  inspira- 
tion but  with  sensibility  as  exquisite,  followed  in  1749 
with  the  Ode  on  the  Prospect  of  Eton  College,  and  in 
1750  with  the  Elegy. 

By  Smart  in  his  Hop-Garden,  by  Dodsley  in  his 
Agriculture,  and  by  Grainger  in  his  Sugar -Cane, 
natural  description  was  employed  to  enliven  the  more 
prosaic  species  of  poetry  fashionable  in  this  century. 
John  Gilbert  Cooper,  in  the  second  book  of  his  Power 
of  Harmony,  had  shown  himself  no  unworthy  disciple 
of  Thomson. 

In    1762   its  bounds   were   enlarged   by   Falconer, 


EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY   POETRY     143 

whose  Shipwreck  initiated  a  new  species  of  this  poetry 
by  elaborating  what  had  before  been  incidental.  Two 
years  later  appeared  Goldsmith's  Traveller,  which 
struck  again,  though  with  infinitely  more  power  and 
complexity,  the  note  which  Addison  had  struck  sixty 
years  before.  Two  years  after  the  Traveller  came  The 
Deserted  Village,  a  new  revelation  in  descriptive  poetry. 

But  one  of  the  most  interesting  varieties  of  this 
poetry  sprang  directly  out  of  the  revolution  effected  by 
Kent,  Brown,  and  their  disciples  in  landscape-gardening. 
The  leader  of  this  school  was  William  Mason,  whose 
English  Garden  is  to  poetry  what  the  most  repre- 
sentative works  of  these  artists  were  to  the  pleasaunces 
of  the  aristocracy  of  these  times.  And  this  impressed 
a  peculiar  characteristic  on  descriptive  poetry,  reflected 
successively  in  Shenstone passim,  in  Lyttelton's  Blenheim, 
in  Langhorne's  Studley  Park,  and  in  Cowper's  Task. 

By  Langhorne  and  Beattie  new  elements  were 
imported  into  it.  Both  anticipated  Wordsworth  by 
insisting  on  the  educational  power  of  Nature,  the  one 
by  moralising  and  deducing  lessons  from  it,  the  other 
by  representing  it  as  the  nursery  of  genius  and  virtue. 
But  this  enthusiasm  for  Nature,  which,  as  early  as  1740, 
had  found  passionate  expression  in  Joseph  Warton's 
Enthusiast,  had  led  to  protests  on  the  part  of  the  older 
school.  In  a  singularly  interesting  poem  by  William 
Whitehead,  the  poet  laureate  between  1758  and  1785, 
having,  possibly  from  design,  the  same  title,  he  represents 
Reason  rebuking  one  who  would  renounce  man  and 


144  POETS'  COUNTRY 

social  life  for  Nature.     "  Begone,  vile  world,"  says  the 
Enthusiast — 

Begone,  vile  world  :  the  learn'd,  the  wise, 
The  great,  the  busy  I  despise, 
And  pity  e'en  the  gay. 

These,  these  are  joys  alone,  I  cry  ; 
'Tis  here,  divine  Philosophy, 

Thou  deign' st  to  set  thy  throne. 
Here  Contemplation  points  the  road 
Through  Nature's  charms  to  Nature's  God, 

These,  these  are  joys  alone. 

Adieu,  ye  vain  low-thoughted  cares, 
Ye  human  hopes,  ye  human  fears- 
Ye  pleasures  and  ye  pains. 

But  Reason  replies  that  man  was  made  for  man  : 

The  fair  variety  of  things 
Are  merely  life's  refreshing  springs 
To  soothe  him  on  his  way. 

Meanwhile,  Nature -painting  had  been  progressing 
apace.  Joseph  Warton  had  followed  up  the  Enthusiast 
with  other  poems  in  the  same  strain.  His  brother 
Thomas  had  followed  in  his  footsteps,  and  if  his  note 
had  been  somewhat  academic,  it  had  been  genuine. 

In  1765  Jago  had  made  Edgehill  and  the  prospect 
from  it  the  theme  of  the  most  elaborate  local  poem 
which  had  yet  appeared  in  our  language.  About  the 
same  time,  though  the  poem  was  published  some  years 
later,  John  Scott  had  made  Am  well  the  subject  of  a 
poem  which  was  no  unworthy  anticipation  of  what 
Cowper  was  to  do  for  Weston.  In  1783  appeared 


EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY  POETRY    145 

Crabbe's  Village,  and  in  1788  Crowe's  Lewesdon  Hill. 
The  next  year  appeared  the  first  instalment  of  Bowies' 
Sonnets,  which  undoubtedly  mark  an  era  in  descriptive 
poetry,  though  they  scarcely  imported  into  it  any  dis- 
tinctly new  elements. 

The  descriptive  poetry  of  the  first  part  of  the 
eighteenth  century  has  scarcely  any  intrinsic  value,  with 
the  exception  of  that  produced  by  Thomson,  Dyer,  and 
Collins.  The  interest  of  that  produced  during  the 
second  part  is  chiefly  historical :  it  lies  in  its  anticipa- 
tion, faint  it  must  be  owned  and  feeble,  of  what  the 
poets  of  the  fuller  day  of  the  revolutionary  period 
developed  and  matured.  But  it  may  be  said  with  truth 
that,  in  an  embryonic  form,  almost  all  the  elements 
entering  into  the  composition  of  that  poetry  may  be 
distinctly  traced.  We  have  Wordsworth,  we  have 
Coleridge,  we  have  Scott,  we  have  Shelley,  we  have 
Byron,  we  have  even  Keats  and  Tennyson,  in  rude  and 
crude  adumbration.  To  study  this  poetry  is  to  trace 
what  is  most  charming  and  most  powerful  in  modern 
masters  to  its  sources.  We  are  not  concerned  with 
doing  that  here,  as  our  sole  business  is  with  Nature- 
poetry.  Let  a  brief  illustration  of  what  has  been  said, 
confining  itself  strictly  to  the  subject  under  considera- 
tion, suffice.  So  far  as  the  mere  materials  of  natural 
description  are  concerned,  they  had,  as  we  have  seen, 
been  exhausted  by  the  poets  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
They  had  presented  Nature  in  all  her  forms  and  in  all  her 

aspects,  in  all  her  simple  and  native  picturesqueness  and 

L 


146  POETS'  COUNTRY 

beauty,  in  the  aspects  she  assumed  when  controlled  and 
modified  by  art.  They  had  painted  her  in  broad,  free 
fresco ;  they  had  painted  her  in  miniature.  Resolving 
her  into  her  constituent  parts,  they  had  described  with 
minute  particularity  her  minutest  objects.  When  John- 
son observed,  or  rather  makes  Imlac  in  his  Rasselas 
observe,  that  "the  poet  does  not  number  the  streaks  of 
the  tulip,  or  describe  the  different  shades  in  the  verdure 
of  the  forest,"  he  does  not  seem  to  be  aware  that  this 
was  just  what  his  contemporaries  were  beginning  to  do. 
Tennyson  himself  is  no  more  microscopically  observant 
than  Scott  of  Am  well  and  Crabbe.  Nor  was  this  all. 
They  had  insisted  on  the  educational  power  of  Nature, 
on  the  moral  discipline  derived  from  close  communion 
with  her.  They  had  felt  and  expressed  her  association 
with  peace  and  joy,  and  had,  like  Wordsworth  after- 
wards, both  learnt  and  taught  from  the  contemplation 
of  her  the  cheerful  faith 

That  all  that  we  behold  is  full  of  blessings. 

Keats,  when  he  wrote,  in  the  well-known  lines  in 
Sleep  and  Poetry,  of  the  later  seventeenth  and  the 
eighteenth  century  poets, 

Ah,  dismal-soul' d ! 

The  winds  of  heaven  blew,  the  ocean  roll'd 
Its  gathering  waves — ye  felt  it  not.     The  blue 
Bared  its  eternal  bosom  and  the  dew 
Of  summer  nights  collected  still  to  make 
The  morning  precious  :  beauty  was  awake  ! 
Why  were  ye  not  awake  ?     But  ye  were  dead 
To  things  ye  knew  not  of, 


EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY  POETRY    147 

however  it  may  apply  to  the  poetry  typical  of  the 
Augustan  Age,  most  certainly  does  not  apply  to  the 
descriptive  poetry  typical  of  the  latter  half  of  the 
century. 

How  is  it,  then,  that  the  Nature -poetry  of  the 
eighteenth  century  ceases  to  appeal  to  us,  and  has  been 
so  completely  superseded  by  that  of  the  nineteenth 
century  ?  The  question  is  easily  answered.  It  is  one 
thing  to  initiate,  it  is  another  thing  to  perfect ;  it  is  one 
thing  to  work  in  shackles  and  in  the  dark,  quite  another 
thing  to  work  untrammelled  and  in  the  light.  The 
poets  of  the  eighteenth  century  were  clogged  and 
encumbered  with  traditions  and  surroundings  eminently 
unpropitious  to  the  study  and  treatment  of  Nature. 
They  lived  in  an  age  of  commonplaces,  conventionality, 
and  prose,  their  interests  being  typified  by  such  themes 
as  many  of  them  chose  even  as  occasions  for  their 
homage  to  Nature.  One,  as  we  have  seen,  expounded 
the  art  of  preserving  health,  another  celebrated  hop- 
gardens, another  the  production  of  sugar,  and  one  of  the 
most  inspired  of  them  the  breeding  of  sheep  and  the 
manufacture  of  woollen.  Their  style,  in  addition  to 
being  as  a  rule  diffuse  and  cumbrous,  was  not  merely 
artificial,  but  artificial  in  the  worst  sense  of  the  term, 
deformed  by  the  falsetto  of  pseudo-classicism  and  by 
the  falsetto  of  an  absurdly  stilted  phraseology,  at  once 
trivial  and  pompous.  An  indiscriminating  realism,  with 
a,  tendency  to  dwell  unduly  on  unimportant  and  insigni- 
ficant particulars,  marks  their  descriptions.  What  is  in 


148  POETS'  COUNTRY 

the  poetry  of  the  nineteenth  century — in  that  of  Words- 
worth and  Shelley,  for  instance — the  suffusion  of  the 
divine  and  spiritual  element,  is  in  theirs  mere  con- 
ventional Christianity.  There  are,  however,  exceptions 
to  this,  as  notably  in  Thomson's  Hymn  appended  to  the 
Seasons,  but  such  exceptions  are  rare.  Save  here  and 
there,  as  in  Collins,  for  example,  no  imagination  and  no 
fancy  modify  the  laborious  accumulation  of  particulars 
which  commonly  make  up  their  landscapes.  But 
perhaps  their  greatest  defect  as  painters  of  Nature  is 
that  with  very  few  exceptions,  notably  Collins  and 
Gray,  they  had  not  discovered  the  secret  of  which 
Tennyson  was  such  a  consummate  master,  namely,  that 
onomatopoeia,  in  other  words,  that  rhythm  and  word- 
sounds  are  to  descriptive  poetry  what  colours  are  in  a 
painting.  It  is  by  a  double  appeal — an  appeal  to  the 
ear  as  well  as  by  an  appeal  to  the  mind — that  such 
poetry  produces  its  effect.  It  is  here  that  Thomson 
fails,  and  this  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  his  descriptions, 
even  when  his  epithets  and  choice  of  phrase  are  in 
themselves  felicitously  graphic,  so  often  leave  us 
unsatisfied. 

The  poets  of  the  nineteenth  century  worked  under 
very  different  conditions.  The  old  impediments  had 
been  removed :  all  was  light,  freedom,  emancipation. 
In  nothing  was  this  more  apparent  than  in  the  change 
which  came  over  descriptive  poetry.  Purged  of  the 
dross  of  a  prosaic  age,  and  cleared  of  the  old  lumber  of 
Augustan  and  pseudo- classical  tradition,  it  "sprang 


EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY  POETRY    149 

upward  like  a  pyramid  of  fire."  It  became  penetrated 
with  enthusiasm  and  power.  With  a  brilliance  and 
vividness  never  before  approached,  Scott  painted  Nature 
in  her  superbest  and  most  picturesque  forms.  In 
Wordsworth  it  was  not  Nature's  semblance  but  Nature 
herself  that  found  expression,  and  Nature  in  almost  all 
her  aspects,  and  in  almost  all  her  moods.  In  a  sphere 
more  restricted  the  same  may  be  said  with  literal  truth 
of  Coleridge.  Byron  was  a  more  doubtful  votary,  but  if 
at  his  worst  he  is  a  splendid  rhetorician,  at  his  best  he  is  the 
trumpet  voice  of  storm  and  mountain  and  cataract.  It  is 
no  figure  of  speech  to  say  that  Shelley  became  her  very 
harp.  Keats  caught  her  witchery,  and  may  we  not  say 
that  in  Tennyson  were  blended  all  that  distinguished 
these  poets  ?  In  the  nineteenth  century,  indeed, 
descriptive  poetry  in  all  its  branches  was  carried  to  a 
perfection  which  it  has  never  attained  before,  either  in 
our  own  or  in  any  other  literature  in  the  world. 


IN  or  about  1700,  Pope's  father  removed  from  London 
to  a  house  at  Binfield  near  Wokingham  in  Berkshire, 
in  the  midst  of  the  tract  known  as  the  Royal  Hunt,  the 
poet  then  being  a  child  in  his  thirteenth  or  fourteenth 
year.  It  was  here  that  his  genius  awoke,  and  it  was 
here  that  he  educated  himself,  and  it  was  here  that  all 
his  early  poems  were  written.  The  house,  of  which 
nothing  now  remains  but  one  room — according  to 
tradition,  Pope's  study — stood  on  the  highest  ground, 
commanding  on  all  sides  most  extensive  and  picturesque 
views.  From  it  can  be  seen  the  open  heaths  lying 
around  Ascot,  the  undulating  bosky  ranges  of  hills 
towards  Windsor,  and  on  the  horizon,  blue  in  the  dis- 
tance, the  Oxfordshire  hills  as  they  descend  to  the  river 
above  Marlowe.  Since  Pope's  time  much  of  the  timber 
has  been  cut  down,  and  what  was  then  a  woody  solitude 
has,  in  many  places,  and  particularly  in  the  immediate 
neighbourhood  of  the  house,  been  built  over.  Still, 
however,  a  row  of  stately  Scotch  firs,  on  which  Pope's 

150 


POPE   AND   THE  MINOR  POETS       151 

eye  must  often  have  rested,  remains  to  illustrate  his 
description  of  his  home  : — 

A  little  house  with  trees  a-row, 
And,  like  its  master,  very  low. 

Here,  suggested  to  the  young  poet  by  Denham's 
Coopers  Hill,  but  inspired  by  the  scene  which  was 
every  day  before  him,  Windsor  Forest  was  written. 
As  we  stand  where  he  stood,  however  commonplace  it 
may  be,  we  at  least  recognise  the  general  truth  of  the 
description : — 

Here  hills  and  vales,  the  woodland  and  the  plain, 
Here  earth  and  water  seem  to  strive  again ; 
Not  chaos-like  together  crushed  and  bruis'd, 
But,  as  the  world,  harmoniously  confus'd : 
Where  order  in  variety  we  see, 
And  where,  though  all  things  differ,  all  agree  ; 
Here  waving  groves  a  chequer'd  scene  display, 
And  part  admit  and  part  exclude  the  day. 

There,  interspers'd  in  lawns  and  op'ning  glades, 
Thin  trees  arise  that  shun  each  other's  shades. 
Here  in  full  light  the  russet  plains  extend, 
There,  wrapt  in  clouds  the  blueish  hills  ascend. 
E'en  the  wild  heath  displays  her  purple  dyes, 
And  midst  the  desert  fruitful  fields  arise, 
That,  crown'd  with  tufted  trees  and  springing  corn, 
Like  verdant  isles  the  sable  waste  adorn. 

The  minute  care  with  which  he  had  studied  natural 
objects  is  apparent  throughout  the  whole  poem  in  the 
well-known  description  of  the  death  of  the  pheasant,  in 
the  epithets  he  applies  to  the  various  tributaries  of  the 


152  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Thames,  and  in  his  characterisation  of  the  fish  found 
in  them. 

The  silver  eel  in  shining  volumes  roll'd 

is  most  happy.  The  only  other  passage  in  his  poems, 
besides  what  has  been  quoted  from  Windsor  Forest, 
displaying  any  sense  of  the  picturesque  in  Nature  is  in 
Eloisa  to  Abelard,  where  the  modern  note  of  sub- 
jectivity infusing  natural  objects  with  sentiment  is 
effective : — 

The  darksome  pines  that  o'er  yon  rocks  reclin'd 

Wave  high,  and  murmur  to  the  hollow  wind, 

The  wand'ring  streams  that  shine  between  the  hills, 

The  grots  that  echo  to  the  tinkling  rills, 

The  dying  gales  that  pant  upon  the  trees, 

The  lakes  that  quiver  to  the  curling  breeze ; 

No  more  these  scenes  my  meditation  aid, 

Or  lull  to  rest  the  visionary  maid. 

But  o'er  the  twilight  groves  and  dusky  caves, 

Long-sounding  aisles  and  intermingled  graves, 

Black  Melancholy  sits,  and  round  her  throws 

A  deathlike  silence  and  a  dead  repose  : 

Her  gloomy  presence  saddens  all  the  scene, 

Shades  ev'ry  flower  and  darkens  ev'ry  green, 

Deepens  the  murmur  of  the  falling  floods, 

And  breathes  a  browner  horror  on  the  woods. 

That  Pope  had  a  feeling  for  Nature  is  abundantly 
evident  from  his  prose  correspondence,  in  which  he  not 
infrequently  gave  the  rein  to  such  descriptions,  which 
he  seems  to  have  thought  more  appropriate  for  prose 
than  for  poetry.  In  his  poetry,  indeed,  he  speaks 
contemptuously,  like  Horace,  of  "pure  description," 
holding  "  the  place  of  sense."  And  indeed  his  poetry, 


PRIOR  PARK,  BATH 

Prior  Park,,  Bath,  although  not  associated  with  Pope  as 
a  poet,  has  an  avenue  there  called  "Pope's  Walk,"  his 
favourite  resort  when  he  was  with  Fielding  a  visitor  to 
Ralph  Allen.  The  grounds  are  laid  out  in  the  landscape 
gardening  manner  of  his  period,  with  bits  of  classical 
architecture  and  artificial  ponds,  one  of  the  latter  being 
shown  in  this  picture. 


POPE   AND   THE   MINOR  POETS      153 

like  his  famous  grotto,  owed  much  more  to  art  than  to 
nature. 

Perhaps  the  most  favourable  specimen  which  can  be 
quoted  from  his  disciple  Gay  is  the  following  evening 
scene  from  Rural  Sports : — 

Or  when  the  ploughman  leaves  the  task  of  day, 
And,  trudging  homeward,  whistles  on  his  way : 
When  the  big-udder'd  cows  with  patience  stand, 
Waiting  the  strokings  of  the  damsel's  hand, 
No  warbling  cheers  the  woods :  the  feathered  choir 
To  court  kind  slumbers  to  their  sprays  retire ; 
When  no  rude  gale  disturbs  the  sleeping  trees, 
Nor  aspen  leaves  confess  the  gentlest  breeze ; 

Far  in  the  deep  the  sun  his  glory  hides, 
A  streak  of  gold  the  sea  and  sky  divides  ; 
The  purple  clouds  their  amber  lining  show, 
And,  edg'd  with  flame,  rolls  every  wave  below. 

Over  Garth's  Claremont,  which,  like  Pope's  Windsor 
Forest,  was  suggested  by  Denham's  poem,  as  it  contains 
very  little  description,  we  need  not  pause,  nor  need  a 
word  be  said  about  any  of  the  Pastorals  from  Pope's  to 
Gay's,  from  Gay's  to  Scott  of  Amwell's,  or  about  Am- 
brose Philips's  once  celebrated  Epistle  from  Copenhagen., 
a  winter-piece  which  Pope  pronounced  to  be  noble,  or 
about  the  local  scenes  sketched  in  John  Philips's  Cyder 
— for  nothing  could  be  more  commonplace.  Somerville's 
Chase  deserves  a  passing  notice,  for,  verbose  and  prolix 
though  most  of  it  is,  it  abounds  in  vivid  pictures  drawn 
with  enthusiasm  from  the  hunting  -  fields.  Tickell, 
Addison's  friend,  has  in  the  artificial  style  of  the  age 


154  POETS'  COUNTRY 

given  a  really  charming  picture  of  the  grounds  of  War- 
wick House,  consecrated  by  the  memory  of  his  master — 

Thou  hill,  whose  brow  the  antique  structures  grace, 
Rear'd  by  bold  chiefs  of  Warwick's  noble  race  ; 
Why,  once  so  lov'd,  whene'er  thy  bower  appears, 
O'er  my  dim  eyeballs  glance  the  sudden  tears  ? 
How  sweet  were  once  thy  prospects,  fresh  and  fair, 
Thy  sloping  walks,  and  unpolluted  air ! 
How  sweet  the  glooms  beneath  thy  aged  trees, 
Thy  noontide  shadow,  and  thine  evening  breeze ! 
His  image  thy  forsaken  bowers  restore  : 
Thy  walks  and  airy  prospects  charm  no  more ; 
No  more  the  summer  in  thy  glooms  allay 'd, 
Thy  evening  breezes,  and  thy  noontide  shade. 

But  over  two  of  the  minor  poets  of  this  age,  in 
which  description  had  quite  a  subordinate  place,  we 
must  pause — Thomas  Parnell  and  Matthew  Green. 
Parnell,  so  intimately  associated  with  Pope  and  Swift, 
is  of  course  generally  known  by  the  Hermit,  but 
among  his  poems  are  two — the  Night-Piece  on  Death 
and  A  Hymn  to  Contentment — which  in  their  union  of 
sentiment  with  description  anticipate  Gray.  Certainly 
a  high  place  among  the  descriptive  poets  of  his  age 
must  be  assigned  to  the  following  passage  from  the 
first  poem : — 

How  deep  yon  azure  dyes  the  sky ! 
Where  orbs  of  gold  unnumber'd  lie  ; 
While  through  their  ranks,  in  silver  pride, 
The  nether  crescent  seems  to  glide. 
The  slumbering  breeze  forgets  to  breathe, 
The  lake  is  smooth  and  clear  beneath, 
Where  once  again  the  spangled  show 
Descends  to  meet  our  eyes  below. 


POPE   AND   THE   MINOR  POETS      155 

The  grounds,  which  on  the  right  aspire, 
In  dimness  from  the  view  retire  : 
The  left  presents  a  place  of  graves 
Whose  wall  the  silent  water  laves. 
That  steeple  guides  thy  doubtful  sight 
Among  the  livid  gleams  of  night. 

Those  graves,  with  bending  osier  bound, 
That  nameless  heave  the  crumbled  ground. 

It  will  be  seen  that  Gray  took  from  this  last  line 
one  of  the  most  graphic  touches  of  description  in  the 

Elegy-— 

Where  heaves  the  turf  in  many  a  mouldering  heap. 

Parnell  stands  quite  alone  among  the  poets  of  his  age 
— it  will  be  remembered  that  he  was  born  in  1679  and 
died  in  1718 — in  striking  this  note. 

To  find  Matthew  Green  singled  out  for  a  place 
among  descriptive  poets  may  seem  very  surprising  to 
those  who  only  know  him  generally  in  connection  with 
his  singularly  original  poem  Tlie  Spleen.  And  yet  he 
is  fairly  entitled  to  such  a  place.  The  Spleen  is  one  of 
the  most  delightful  and  original  poems  in  the  English 
language :  it  is  indeed  thick-sown  with  unforgettable 
couplets.  Where  have  scribblers  in  verse  been  so 
happily  touched  off  as  in  the  couplet — 

Who  buzz  in  rhyme,  and,  like  blind  flies, 
Err  with  their  wings  for  want  of  eyes. 

How  good  in  their  various  ways  are — 


156  POETS'  COUNTRY 

And  when  he  can't  prevent  foul  play, 
Enjoys  the  folly  of  the  fray. 

Nor  runs,  with  wisdom's  Sirens  caught, 

On  quicksands  swallowing  shipwrecked  thought. 

A  stranger  into  life  I'm  come, 
Dying  may  be  our  going  home, 
Transported  here  by  angry  Fate, 
The  convicts  of  a  prior  state. 

Though  pleased  to  see  the  dolphins  play, 
I  mind  my  compass  and  my  way. 

Nor  bigots,  who  but  one  way  see, — 
Through  blinkers  of  authority. 

Or  where  he  says  of  himself — 

In  life's  rough  tide  I  sunk  not  down, 
But  swam,  till  Fortune  threw  a  rope, 
Buoyant  on  bladders  fill'd  with  hope. 

But  our  business  is  with  its  touches  of  natural 
description,  and  they  lie  in  touches  and  in  little  cameos 
rather  than  in  elaborated  pictures.  How  charming  is 
the  following : — 

May  my  humble  dwelling  stand 
Upon  some  chosen  spot  of  land : 
A  pond  before  full  to  the  brim, 
Where  cows  may  cool,  and  geese  may  swim ; 
Behind,  a  green,  like  velvet  neat, 
Soft  to  the  eye  and  to  the  feet, 
Where  odorous  plants  in  evening  fair 
Breathe  all  around  ambrosial  air. 

Where  the  half-cirque,  which  vision  bounds, 

Like  amphitheatre  surrounds : 

And  woods  impervious  to  the  breeze, 


WINDSOR  CASTLE  FROM  NEAR  ETON  LOCK 

Close  by  those  meads  for  ever  crowned  with  flowers, 
Where  Thames  with  pride  surveys  his  rising  towers. 

Rape  of  the  Lock,  canto  iii. — POPE. 


)   HO8C 

tafaKH)  yl 


POPE   AND  THE   MINOR  POETS      157 

Thick  phalanx  of  embodied  trees ; 
From  hills  through  plains  in  dusk  array 
Extended  far,  repel  the  day ; 
Here  stillness,  height,  and  solemn  shade 
Invite,  and  contemplation  aid  : 

And  dreams  beneath  the  spreading  beech 
Inspire,  and  docile  fancy  teach  ; 
While  soft  as  breezy  breath  of  wind 
Impulses  rustle  through  the  mind. 

There  see  the  clover,  pea,  and  bean 

Vie  in  variety  of  green ; 

Fresh  pastures  speckled  o'er  with  sheep, 

Brown  fields  their  fallow  Sabbaths  keep  ; 

Plump  Ceres  golden  tresses  wear, 

And  poppy  top-knots  deck  her  hair, 

And  silver  streams  through  meadows  stray, 

And  Naiads  on  the  margin  play, 

And  lesser  nymphs  on  side  of  hills, 

From  plaything  urns  pour  down  the  rills. 

Few  poets — and  a  real  poet  Green  was,  finely 
touched  and  finely  tempered — stole  through  life  so 
noiselessly,  all  that  is  known  of  him  practically  being 
that  he  was  born  in  1696,  was  a  Dissenter,  probably  a 
Quaker,  had  some  appointment  in  the  Custom-House, 
and  died  in  his  forty-second  year  at  a  lodging  in  Nag's- 
head  Court,  Gracechurch  Street,  in  1737.  Pope  and 
Goldsmith  recognised  his  merits ;  and  Gray,  who  has 
borrowed  more  than  one  happy  expression  from  him, 
said  of  his  poetry :  "  There  is  wit  everywhere.  Reading 
would  have  formed  his  judgment  and  harmonised  his 
ear,  for  even  his  wood-notes  often  break  out  into 
strains  of  real  poetry  and  music."  To  general  readers 


158  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Green  is  not  known  so  well  as  he  ought  to  be,  but  it 
would  be  difficult  to  imagine  any  one  who  loves  good 
things  who  would  not  be  grateful  for  an  introduction 
to  him. 

A  word  in  passing  must  be  said  for  Richard  Savage, 
whose  melancholy  story  Johnson  has  told  so  patheti- 
cally. His  Wanderer  was  published  in  1729.  It 
abounds  with  laboured  pictures  of  natural  objects,  and 
its  delineation  of  landscape  is,  though  too  conventional, 
not  without  picturesqueness. 

Two  short  extracts  must  suffice.  One  is  a  sunset 
sky : — 

Near  down  th'  etherial  steep 
The  lamp  of  day  hangs  hovering  o'er  the  deep. 
Dun  shades,  in  rocky  shapes  up  ether  roll'd, 
Project  long,  shaggy  points,  deep- ting' d  with  gold. 
Others  take  faint  th'  unripen'd  cherry's  dye, 
And  paint  amusing  landscapes  on  the  eye. 
Their  blue-veil'd  yellow,  through  a  sky  serene 
In  swelling  mixture  forms  a  floating  green, 
Streak'd  through  white  clouds  a  mild  vermilion  shines, 
And  the  breeze  freshens,  as  the  heat  declines. 

Wanderer,  Canto  V. 

The  other  a  mountain  winter  scene  : — 

On  this  bleak  height  tall  firs,  with  ice-work  crown'd, 
Bend,  while  their  flaky  winter  shades  the  ground  : 
Hoarse  and  direct  a  blustering  north  wind  blows, 
On  boughs,  thick-rustling,  crack  the  crisped  snows, 
Tangles  of  frost  half  fright  the  wilder'd  eye 
By  heat  oft  blacken'd  like  a  lowering  sky. 
Hence  down  the  side  two  turbid  rivulets  pour, 
And  devious  two,  in  one  huge  cataract  roar. 


POPE   AND   THE   MINOR  POETS      159 

Yon  rocks  in  rough  assemblage  rush  in  view, 

In  form  an  amphitheatre  they  rise, 

And  a  dark  gulf  in  their  broad  centre  lies. 

Close  with  this  stage  a  precipice  combines, 
Whence  still  the  spacious  country  far  declines ; 
The  herds  seem  insects  in  the  distant  glades, 
And  men  diminish' d,  as  at  noon  their  shades. 

Canto  I. 

Cumbrous  but  faithful. 


THOMSON  AND   DYER 

In  Thomson  and  Dyer  we  come  to  the  more 
elaborate  Nature -painters  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
As  it  is  the  object  of  this  work  to  localise  descriptions 
as  much  as  possible,  and  so  to  associate  them  directly 
with  the  personal  surroundings  of  the  several  poets,  it 
is  not  necessary  to  enter  into  any  general  account  of 
these  two  poets,  but  to  deal  with  them  almost  entirely 
in  relation  to  what  may  be  called  the  topical  element 
in  their  poetry. 

James  Thomson,  the  son  of  a  Scotch  Presbyterian 
minister,  was  born  at  Ednam  in  Roxburghshire,  in 
September  1700,  a  place  the  surroundings  of  which  are 
flat  and  uninteresting.  But  some  two  months  after  the 
poet's  birth  his  father  removed  to  Southdean,  a  larger 
parish  near  Jedburgh  in  the  same  county.  This  was 
a  most  picturesque  spot.  The  manse  nestled  at  the 
foot  of  Southdean  Law,  and  fine  and  noble  was  the 


160  POETS'  COUNTRY 

scenery  around  it.  It  was  here  that  Thomson  was 
introduced  to  Nature  and  derived  his  earliest  inspiration. 
In  Autumn  the  scene  which  met  his  eyes  is  described 
in  a  more  or  less  generalised  description  of  Scotland  : — 

Here  awhile  the  Muse, 

High-hovering  o'er  the  broad  cerulean  scene, 
Sees  Caledonia  in  romantic  view : 
Her  airy  mountains,  from  the  waving  main, 
Invested  with  a  keen  diffusive  sky, 
Breathing  the  soul  acute  ;  her  forests  huge 
Incult,  robust,  and  tall,  by  Nature's  hand 
Planted  of  old  ;  her  azure  lakes  between, 
Poured  out  extensive,  and  of  wat'ry  wealth 
Full ;  winding  deep,  and  green,  her  fertile  vales ; 
With  many  a  cool,  translucent,  brimming  flood 
Washed  lovely,  from  the  Tweed  (pure  parent  stream, 
Whose  pastoral  banks  first  heard  my  Doric  reed, 
With,  sylvan  Jed,  thy  tributary  brook) 
To  where  the  north-inflated  tempest  foams 
O'er  Orca's l  or  Berubium's  2  highest  peak. 

Some  of  the  winter  scenes  at  the  beginning  of 
the  poem  describing  that  season  were  plainly  drawn 
from  what  he  had  often  witnessed  here.  In  1725  he 
came  up  to  London  ;  next  year  Wintet*  appeared,  and 
between  that  date  and  1730,  Spring.,  Summer,  and 
Autumn,  the  collected  poems  being  published,  with 
the  last  instalment  and  with  the  closing  Hymn,  under 
the  title  of  The  Seasons,  in  1730. 

The  revisions  were  many  and  important,  the  most 
remarkable  being  embodied  in  an  interleaved  copy  of 
the  edition  of  1738,  from  which  the  current  text  is 

1  The  Orkneys.  2  The  Cape  of  St.  Andrew. 


THE   THAMES   AT   RICHMOND   FROM   THE 
TERRACE 

Considered  by  Bulwer  Lytton  to  be  "  the  loveliest  view 
of  England's  loveliest  river/'  and  has  been  painted  by  many 
artists,  amongst  others  Turner  ;  but  I  do  not  remember  one 
by  moonlight.  Higher  up  the  hill  is  a  tablet  erected  to 
Thomson.  p  g_  \yt 


JL.II3  i 

;; 


POPE   AND   THE   MINOR  POETS      161 

printed,  some  of  the  most  felicitous  alterations  and 
additions  being  attributed  to  Pope.  The  Seasons  are 
full  of  local  pictures  drawn  from  scenes  with  which 
Thomson  was  familiar,  such  as  Hagley,  the  seat  of 
Lord  Lyttelton,  thus  described  in  Spring : — 

Through  Hagley  Park  you  stray, 
Thy  British  Tempe !     There  along  the  dale, 
With  woods  o'erhung  and  shagg'd  with  mossy  rocks, 
Whence  on  each  hand  the  gushing  waters  play, 
And  down  the  rough  cascade  white  dashing  fall, 
Or  gleam  in  lengthened  vista  through  the  trees, 
You  silent  steal ;  or  sit  beneath  the  shade 
Of  solemn  oaks  that  tuft  the  swelling  mounts 
Thrown  graceful  round  by  Nature's  careless  hand, 
And  pensive  listen  to  the  various  voice 
Of  rural  peace :  the  herds,  the  flocks,  the  birds, 
The  hollow-whispering  breeze,  the  plaint  of  rills 
That,  purling  down  amid  the  twisted  roots 
Which  creep  around,  their  dewy  murmurs  shake 
On  the  soothed  ear. 

Then,  referring  to  the  view  from  the  higher  grounds 
in  Hagley  Park,  and  the  house  itself,  he  continues : — 

Meanwhile  you  gain  the  height,  from  whose  fair  brow 

The  bursting  prospect  spreads  immense  around : 

And,  snatch'd  o'er  hill  and  dale,  and  wood  and  lawn, 

And  verdant  field,  and  darkening  heath  between, 

And  villages  embosom'd  soft  in  trees, 

And  spiry  towns  by  surging  columns  marked 

Of  household  smoke,  your  eye  excursive  roams ; 

Wide-stretching  from  the  Hall,  in  whose  kind  haunt 

The  Hospitable  Genius  lingers  still, 

To  where  the  broken  landscape,  by  degrees 

Ascending,  roughens  into  rigid  hills ; 

O'er  which  the  Cambrian  mountains,  like  far  clouds 

That  skirt  the  blue  horizon,  dusky  rise. 

M 


162  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Another  spot  well  known  to  him  was  Bubb  Dod- 
ington's  seat  at  Eastbury,  in  Dorsetshire,  which  he 
describes  with  laboured  infelicity  in  Autumn : — 

Oh,  lose  me  in  the  green  delightful  walks 

Of,  Dodington,  thy  seat,  serene  and  plain ; 

Where  simple  Nature  reigns,  and  every  view, 

Diffusive,  spreads  the  pure  Dorsetian  downs 

In  boundless  prospect ;  yonder  shagg'd  with  wood, 

Here  rich  with  harvest,  and  there  white  with  flocks ! 

New  beauties  rise  with  each  revolving  day, 

New  columns  swell,  and  still  the  fresh  Spring  finds 

New  plants  to  quicken  and  new  groves  to  green. 

Here,  as  I  steal  along  the  sunny  wall, 

Where  Autumn  basks,  with  fruit  empurpled  deep, 

My  pleasing  theme  continual  prompts  my  thought : 

Presents  the  downy  peach ;  the  shining  plum, 

With  a  fine  bluish  mist  of  animals 

Clouded  ;  the  ruddy  nectarine  ;  and,  dark 

Beneath  his  ample  leaf,  the  luscious  fig. 

Stowe,  then  the  seat  of  Lord  Cobham,  was  also 
visited  by  Thomson,  and  found  in  him  its  laureate. 
But  the  glories  of  Stowe  are  things  of  the  past,  and  as 
Thomson's  description  has  not  much  intrinsic  merit  or 
interest  it  may  be  passed  without  citation.  Let  us 
now  pass  to  the  place  where  Thomson  passed  the  last 
twelve  years  of  his  life,  where  he  revised  the  Seasons, 
introducing  many  a  touch  drawn  from  what  he  daily 
saw,  and  where  he  breathed  his  last.  It  was  a  cottage 
in  Kew  Foot  Lane,  at  Richmond,  looking  down  upon 
the  Thames  and  commanding  the  distant  landscape ; 


POPE   AND   THE   MINOR   POETS      163 

behind  this  was  his  garden.  For  many  years  this  most 
interesting  memorial  of  the  poet  was  piously  preserved. 
After  his  death  the  cottage  and  grounds  were  purchased 
by  a  Mr.  Ross,  who,  though  he  enlarged  both,  was 
most  careful  to  preserve  both.  Then,  after  becoming 
the  property  of  the  Hon.  Francis  Boscawen,  it  passed 
into  the  hands  of  the  Earl  of  Shaftesbury,  who  built 
a  villa  on  the  site  of  it,  but,  for  the  sake  of  pre- 
serving it,  incorporated  the  cottage,  making  it  the 
vestibule  of  his  villa.  When  Howitt  visited  it  about 
1846,  the  room  which  Thomson  used  was  still  intact, 
a  plain  mahogany  Pembroke  belonging  to  him  stand- 
ing where  it  stood  when  he  sat  at  it,  with  this 
inscription  on  it : — 

On  this  table  James  Thomson  constantly  wrote.  It  was 
therefore  purchased  of  his  servant,  who  also  gave  these  brass  hooks 
on  which  his  hat  and  cane  were  hung  in  this  his  sitting-room. 

The  garden,  too,  was  carefully  preserved,  together 
with  all  its  trees,  as  well  as  the  alcove  in  which 
Thomson  so  often  sat,  a  simple  wooden  structure  with 
a  plain  back  and  two  outward  sloping  sides  and  a  bench 
running  round  it,  the  only  thing  changed  being  its 
position.  Within  the  last  few  years  everything  has 
been  swept  away  by  the  vandalism  characteristic  of 
the  last  half  -  century.  It  is  now  part  of  the  Royal 
Hospital,  the  only  trace  of  the  old  place  being  a 
part  of  the  en  trance -hall  and  possibly  the  private 
apartment  of  the  matron  of  the  institution,  and  the 


164  POETS'  COUNTRY 

garden,    but   alcove   and    every   other    souvenir    have 
vanished. 

What  could  then  be  seen  from  Thomson's  "rural 
domain,"  as  he  called  it,  and  can  now  be  seen  from  the 
prospect,  he  describes  in  Summer  : — 

Shall  we  ascend, 

While  radiant  Summer  opens  all  its  pride, 
Thy  hill,  delightful  Shene  ?     Here  let  us  sweep 
The  boundless  landscape  :  now  the  raptur'd  eye, 
Exulting  swift,  to  huge  Augusta1  send, 
Now  to  the  sister-hills  2  that  skirt  her  plain, 
To  lofty  HaiTow  now,  and  now  to  where 
Majestic  Windsor  lifts  his  princely  brow. 
In  lovely  contrast  to  this  glorious  view, 
Calmly  magnificent,  then  will  we  turn 
To  where  the  silver  Thames  first  rural  grows. 
There  let  the  feasted  eye  unwearied  stray ; 
Luxurious,  there,  rove  through  the  pendent  woods 
That  nodding  hang  o'er  Harrington's  retreat ; 
And,  stooping  thence  to  Ham's  embowering  walks. 

Slow  let  us  trace  the  matchless  vale  of  Thames, 
Fair-winding  up  to  where  the  Muses  haunt 
In  Twickenham's  bowers, 

O  vale  of  bliss  !     O  softly  swelling  hills ! 

Heav'ns  !  what  a  goodly  prospect  spreads  around 
Of  hills,  and  dales,  and  woods,  and  lawns,  and  spires, 
And  glittering  towns,  and  gilded  streams,  till  all 
The  stretching  landscape  into  smoke  decays ! 

The  Seasons,  it  must  be  admitted,  does  not  hold 
the  same  place  in  modern  estimation  as  it  did  in  that 
of  our  forefathers.  It  is  a  poem  heavily  clogged  with 

1  London.  2  Highgate  and  Hampstead. 


POPE   AND   THE    MINOR   POETS       165 

diffuse  commonplace,  and  still  more  intolerable  didactic 
platitudes.  Its  versification  is  frequently  harsh  and 
cumbrous,  its  diction  vicious ;  it  is  a  poem  with  very 
little  imagination  and  with  no  architecture.  But 
Thomson  was  an  inspired  poet :  he  had  true  enthusiasm. 
To  the  student  of  Nature  the  poem  must  always  be  a 
delight,  so  minutely  accurate,  fresh,  and  original  are  his 
pictures.  "  Gray,"  says  Nicholls  in  his  Reminiscences, 
"  thought  Thomson  had  one  talent  beyond  all  other  poets, 
that  of  describing  the  various  appearances  of  Nature," 
adding  that  "  he  failed  when  he  ventured  to  step  out  of 
this  path "  (Gray's  Letters,  Ed.  Tovey,  vol.  ii.  p.  280). 
Let  us  take  him,  that  we  may  leave  him,  at  his  best ; 
but  even  here  he  occasionally  jars  on  us  : — 

The  meek-eyed  morn  appears,  mother  of  dews, 

At  first  faint-gleaming  in  the  dappled  east ; 

Till  far  o'er  ether  spreads  the  widening  glow, 

And  from  before  the  lustre  of  her  face 

White  breaks  the  clouds  away.     With  quickened  step 

Brown  night  retires.     Young  day  pours  in  apace. 

And  opens  all  the  lawny  prospect  wide. 

The  dripping  rock,  the  mountain's  misty  top 

Swell  on  the  sight,  and  brighten  with  the  dawn. 

Blue  through  the  dusk  the  smoking  currents  shine ; 

And  from  the  bladed  field  the  fearful  hare 

Limps  awkward  ;  while  along  the  forest  glade 

The  wild  deer  trip,  and,  often  turning,  gaze 

At  early  passenger. 

There  is  rich  beauty  in  the  following  : — 

Gay  castles  in  the  clouds  that  pass 
For  ever  flushing  round  a  summer  sky  ; 


166  POETS'  COUNTRY 

and  magic  in  the  picture  of  the  Hebrides, 

Plac'd  far  amid  the  melancholy  main. 

The  minute  accuracy  of  his  observation  is  illustrated 
by  his  description  in  Winter  of  the  earlier  stage  in  the 
freezing  of  water : 

An  icy  gale,  oft  shifting,  o'er  the  pool 
Breathes  a  blue  film  and  in  its  mid  career 
Arrests  the  bickering  stream. 

These  are  typical,  and  the  work  of  which  these  are 
typical  has  in  it  the  elements  of  permanence. 

Thomson  was  fortunate  in  his  theme ;  not  so  the 
poet  who  comes  next  to  him  in  power  of  description. 
"  If,"  wrote  Wordsworth  to  Lady  Beaumont,  "  you 
have  not  read  The  Fleece,  do  so.  The  character  of 
Dyer  as  a  patriot,  a  citizen,  and  a  tender-hearted  friend 
of  humanity  was  in  some  respects  injurious  to  him  as 
a  poet,  and  has  induced  him  to  dwell  upon  processes 
which,  however  important  in  themselves,  were  un- 
susceptible of  being  poetically  treated.  Accordingly  his 
poem  is  in  several  places  dry  and  heavy,  but  its  beauties 
are  innumerable  and  of  a  high  order.  In  point  of 
imagination  and  purity  of  style  I  am  not  sure  that  he 
is  not  superior  to  any  writer  in  verse  since  Milton." 

The  poet  of  whom  Wordsworth  wrote  this  was 
born,  most  probably  in  Carmarthenshire,  in  or  about 
1700.  After  abandoning  the  law,  to  which  he  was 
bred,  he  became  an  artist,  studying  under  Jonathan 
Richardson.  In  1724  he  went  to  Rome  for  the 


POPE   AND   THE   MINOR  POETS      167 

purposes  of  his  profession,  and  there  gathered  the 
materials  for  his  Ruins  of  Rome,  published  some  time 
afterwards.  In  1726  he  returned  to  England,  and  in 
the  same  year  published  in  a  miscellany  the  first 
draft  of  Grongar  Hill  and  The  Country  Walk. 
Later  in  life  he  was  ordained,  and  finally  settled  at 
Coningsby,  in  Lincolnshire,  where  he  wrote  The  Fleece, 
which  appeared  in  1757,  the  year  before  he  died. 

Dyer  has  left  three  poems,  each  in  different  styles 
and  each  in  their  way  memorable :  Grongar  Hill, 
which  is  an  elaborate  rural  picture ;  The  Ruins  of  Rome, 
which  is  a  study  in  the  picturesque  blended  with 
ethical  sentiment;  and  The  Fleece,  which  is  a  technically 
didactic  poem  embroidered  with  much  local  Nature- 
painting.  Grongar  Hill,  the  first  in  date  and  the  first 
in  charm,  was  in  its  mature  shape  evolved  from  some 
verses  in  the  heroic  couplet  written  in  his  sixteenth 
year,  and  again  recast  and  revised  from  an  irregular 
ode  which  appeared  in  Savage's  Miscellany.  The  site 
from  which  Dyer  contemplated  the  scene  which  he  so 
vividly  described  may  be  almost  exactly  identified,  for 
if  it  is  not  precisely  marked  by  the  blackthorn  to  which 
tradition  points,  it  must  have  been  close  by  it.  It  is 
perhaps  the  loveliest  and  most  picturesque  scene  in 
South  Wales,  commanding  a  comprehensive  prospect 
of  the  vale  of  the  Towy.  In  Gilpin's  Observations  on 
the  Wye  will  be  found  an  admirable  critical  commentary 
on  the  poem,  which  is  discussed  locally  from  the  point 
of  view  of  a  landscape  artist.  The  poem  begins,  it 


168  POETS'  COUNTRY 

must  be  owned,  very  badly,  because  of  the  awkward- 
ness of  the  diction  involving  both  obscurity  and  a 
grammatical  blunder : — 

Silent  Nymph,  with  curious  eye, 
Who  the  purple  evening  lie 
On  the  mountain's  lonely  van. 

Indeed,  the  whole  of  the  opening  is  cumbrous  and 
lame,  but  amends  are  soon  made.  The  descriptions 
are  so  detailed  and  exact  that  one  or  two  notes  are  all 
that  are  needed  by  way  of  commentary. 

Now  I  gain  the  mountain's  brow, 
What  a  landscape  lies  below  ! l 
No  clouds,  no  vapours  intervene, 
But  the  gay  and  open  scene 
Does  the  face  of  Nature  show 
In  all  the  hues  of  Heaven's  bow  ; 
And,  swelling  to  embrace  the  light, 
Spreads  around  beneath  the  sight. 

Old  castles  2  on  the  cliffs  arise, 
Proudly  towering  in  the  skies  ! 
Rushing  from  the  woods,  the  spires 
Seem  from  hence  ascending  fires ! 
Half  his  beams  Apollo  sheds 
On  the  yellow  mountain  heads ! 
Gilds  the  fleeces  of  the  flocks, 
And  glitters  on  the  broken  rocks  ! 

Below  me  trees  unnumber'd  rise,8 
Beautiful  in  various  dyes  : 
The  glossy  pine,  the  poplar  blue, 
The  yellow  beech,  the  sable  yew, 

1  The  prospect  from  the  summit  of  Grongar  Hill. 

2  Castle  Kilkenning,  Castle  Carrig,  Dinevawr  Castle,  Drusloin  Castle. 

3  A  very  accurate  description  of  the  wood  below  the  hill. 


POPE   AND   THE   MINOR  POETS      169 

The  slender  fir,  that  taper  grows, 

The  sturdy  oak,  with  broad-spread  boughs. 

And  beyond  the  purple  grove, 

Haunt  of  Phyllis,  Queen  of  Love ! 

Gaudy  as  the  opening  dawn 

Lies  a  long  and  level  lawn, 

On  which  a  dark  hill,  steep  and  high,1 

Holds  and  charms  the  wandering  eye ! 

Deep  are  his  feet  in  Towy's  flood, 

His  sides  are  clothed  with  waving  wood, 

And  ancient  towers  crown  his  brow, 

That  cast  an  awful  look  below ; 

Whose  ragged  walls  the  ivy  creeps 

And  with  her  arms  from  falling  keeps. 

And  see  the  rivers,  how  they  run 
Thro'  woods  and  meads,  in  shade  and  sun, 
Sometimes  swiftly,  sometimes  slow, 
Wave  succeeding  wave,  they  go. 

•  •  •  •  • 

Ever  charming,  ever  new, 
When  will  the  landscape  tire  the  view ! 
The  fountain's  fall,  the  river's  flow, 
The  wooded  valleys,  warm  and  low, 
The  windy  summit,  wild  and  higli 
Roughly  rushing  on  the  sky  ! 

See,  on  the  mountain's  southern  side, 
Where  the  prospect  opens  wide, 
Where  the  evening  gilds  the  tide, 
How  close  and  small  the  hedges  lie ! 
What  streaks  of  meadow  cross  the  eye  ! 
A  step,  methinks,  may  pass  the  stream, 
So  little  distant  dangers  seem. 

The  Country  Walk,  though  minutely  detailed  and 
proving  close  and  accurate  observation,  is  more  common- 

1  This  is  Dinevawr,  or  possibly  Newton  Castle. 


170  POETS'  COUNTRY 

place.  In  The  Ruins  of  Rome  the  note  is  more  rhetorical, 
but  the  pictures  are  vivid  : — 

The  rising  sun 

Flames  on  the  ruins,  in  the  purer  air 
Towering  aloft. 

Or  again — 

The  setting  sun  displays 
His  visible  great  round  between  yon  towers, 
As  through  two  shady  cliffs. 

And  certainly  the  poem  contains  one  of  the  finest 
onomatopoeic  effects  in  our  language,  to  say  nothing 
of  the  fine  imaginative  power  of  the  passage  : — 

The  pilgrim  oft 

At  dead  of  night,  'mid  his  orison  hears 
Aghast  the  voice  of  Time,  disparting  towers, 
Tumbling  all  precipitate  down-dash' d, 
Rattling  around,  loud  thund'ring  to  the  moon. 

The  descriptive  passages  in  The  Fleece  have  all  the 
excellence  of  the  particular  kind  indicated  by  Words- 
worth. Take  a  typical  passage — all  who  are  acquainted 
with  the  parts  of  England  here  described  will  recognise 
the  accuracy  of  the  picture  : — 

Such  the  spacious  plain 

Of  Sarum,  spread  like  Ocean's  boundless  round, 
Where  solitary  Stonehenge,  gray  with  moss, 
Ruin  of  ages,  nods :  such,  too,  the  leas 
And  ruddy  tilth,  which  spiry  Ross  beholds, 
From  a  green  hillock,  o'er  her  lofty  elms ; 
And  Lemster's  brooky  tract,  and  airy  Croft ; 
And  such  Harleian  Eyewood's  swelling  turf, 
Wav'd  as  the  billows  of  a  rolling  sea : 


POPE   AND   THE   MINOR   POETS      171 

And  Shobden,  for  its  lofty  terrace  famed, 
Which  from  a  mountain's  ridge,  elate  o'er  woods 
And  girt  with  all  Siluria,  sees  around 
Regions  on  regions  blended  in  the  clouds. 

The  Fleece  is,  it  must  be  owned,  very  heavy  reading, 
"buried  in  woollen,"  as  a  contemporary  critic  wittily 
observed  of  its  author ;  and  as  the  descriptive  passages 
are  strictly  subordinate  to  the  didactic  portion,  their 
felicity  lies  rather  in  their  terse  and  graphic  force, 
such  as — 

Enormous  rocks  on  rocks,  in  ever- wild 
Posture  of  falling. 

And  this  description  of  a  calm  in  the  Tropics  : — 

The  downy  feather  on  the  cordage  hung, 
Moves  not :  the  flat  sea  shines  like  yellow  gold 
Fus'd  in  the  fire. 

Dyer  is,  indeed,  a  most  pleasing  poet,  and  few  would 
dispute  what  Wordsworth  has  expressed  in  his  Sonnet 
to  him : — 

A  grateful  few,  shall  love  thy  modest  Lay, 
Long  as  the  shepherd's  bleating  flock  shall  stray, 
Long  as  the  thrush  shall  pipe  on  Grongar  Hill ! 


AKENSIDE,  ARMSTRONG,  SHENSTONE, 
GRAINGER,  MALLET,  AND  SMOLLETT 

THERE  is  little  to  detain  us  in  Akenside  and  Armstrong, 
who  are  rather  rhetoricians  than  poets,  and  yet  The 
Pleasures  of  the  Imagination  is  in  some  respects  a 
memorable  poem,  and  at  times  not  without  the  note 
of  nobility,  and  The  Art  of  Preserving  Health  deserves 
more  readers  than  it  finds.  Natural  description  in 
Akenside  is  strictly  subordinated  to  his  didactic 
purpose.  He  was  born  in  November  1721,  at 
Newcastle-on-Tyne,  and  in  a  fragment  of  an  intended 
Fourth  Book  to  his  chief  poem,  written  in  the  last  year 
of  his  life,  he  thus  refers,  not  without  pathos,  to  the 
haunts  of  his  youth  : — 

O  ye  dales 

Of  Tyne,  and  ye  most  ancient  woodlands ;  where 
Oft  as  the  giant  flood  obliquely  strides, 
And  his  banks  open  and  his  lawns  extend, 
Stops  short  the  pleased  traveller  to  view, 
Presiding  o'er  the  scene,  some  rustic  tower 
Founded  by  Norman  or  by  Saxon  hands  : 
O  ye  Northumbrian  shades,  which  overlook 
172 


AKENSIDE  173 

The  rocky  pavement  and  the  mossy  falls 
Of  solitary  Wensbeck's  limpid  stream  ! 
How  gladly  I  recall  your  well-known  seats, 
Belov'd  of  old,  and  that  delightful  time 
When  all  alone,  for  many  a  summer's  day, 
I  wandered  through  your  calm  recesses,  led 
In  silence  by  some  powerful  hand  unseen. 

The  two  passages  in  his  poem  which  are  his  most 
elaborate  Nature -pictures  are  his  description  in  the 
Second  Book  of  the  wild  spot  where  the  Genius  who 
describes  to  him  "the  gracious  ways  of  providence" 
confronts  him,  and  the  following  passage  in  the  Third 
Book,  where  he  shows  how  man  reads  into  Nature  "  the 
inexpressive  semblance  of  himself,  of  thought  and 
passion  "  : — 

Mark  the  sable  woods 

That  shade  sublime  yon  mountain's  nodding  brow : 
With  what  religious  awe  the  solemn  scene 
Commands  your  steps  !  as  if  the  reverend  form 
Of  Minos  or  of  Numa  should  forsake 
Th'  Elysian  seats,  and  down  the  embowering  glade 
Move  to  your  pausing  eye !     Behold  the  expanse 
Of  yon  gay  landscape,  where  the  silver  clouds 
Flit  o'er  the  heavens  before  the  sprightly  breeze  : 
Now  their  gay  cincture  skirts  the  doubtful  sun ; 
Now  streams  of  splendour,  through  their  opening  veil 
Effulgent,  sweep  from  off  the  gilded  lawn 
The  aerial  shadows,  on  the  curling  brook, 
And  on  the  shady  margin's  quivering  leaves 
With  quickest  lustre  glancing. 

Armstrong's  prosaic  theme,  with  its  subdivisions  of 
"Air,"  "Diet,"  "Exercise,"  "The  Passions,"  does  not 
promise  much  poetry,  and  poetry  we  do  not  find,  but  his 


174  POETS'  COUNTRY 

touches  of  natural  description   have  often    distinction 
and  even  beauty  ;  such  as 

The  horrors  of  the  solemn  wood 
While  the  soft  evening  saddens  into  night. 

The  sounding  forest  fluctuates  in  the  storm. 

The  impending  trees 
Stretch  their  extravagant  arms  athwart  the  gloom. 

The  tower  that  long  had  stood 
The  crash  of  thunder  and  the  warring  winds. 

The  roughening  deep  expects  the  storm,  as  sure 
As  red  Orion  mounts  the  shrouded  heaven. 


A  purely  didactic  poem  so  essentially  prosaic  in  its 
theme,  sown  with  lines  like  these,  is  at  least  memorable. 
But  when  Armstrong  attempts,  as  he  does,  in  the 
First  Book,  a  panoramic  view  of  the  scenery  around 
London,  he  so  often  collapses,  and  collapses  so  dismally, 
into  grotesque  commonplace  and  bathos  that  it  is  im- 
possible to  quote  him. 

When  Johnson  observed  of  Shenstone  that  his 
pleasure  was  all  in  his  eye,  he  pierced  to  the  heart  of 
the  truth  about  him.  His  poetry  has  gone  the  way  of 
his  once  famous  Leasowes,  which  imitated  Nature  only 
to  falsify  it.  The  Leasowes,  which  is  situated  halfway 
down  the  descent  from  Hales-Owen,  and  is  about  four 
miles  from  Hagley  in  Herefordshire  and  seven  from 
Birmingham,  may  still  be  seen  in  neglect  and  ruin ; 
his  poems  have  still  a  place  in  the  corpus  of  our 
national  poets,  but  the  life  has  gone  out  of  them,  and 


SHENSTONE  175 

only  the  curious  turn  to  them.  Two -thirds  of  his 
poetry  is  pure  falsetto :  at  the  best  it  is  but  pretty. 
His  ambitious  poetry  is  dulness  incarnate.  It  is 
significant  that  the  two  best  things  which  came  from 
his  pen  are  a  sentence  in  Latin,  inscribed  on  an  urn 
dedicated  to  the  memory  of  Miss  Dolman,  "Heu 
quanto  minus  est  cum  reliquis  versari  quam  tui 
meminisse,"  and  the  cynical  verses  written  in  an 
Inn  at  Henley.  If  he  possessed  what  he  affected, 
an  enthusiasm  for  Nature,  it  finds  expression  in  one 
passage  only ;  it  is  a  stanza  in  a  poem  entitled  Rural 
Elegance : — 

Lo !  not  an  hedgerow  hawthorn  blows, 
Or  humble  harebell  paints  the  plain, 
Or  valley  winds,  or  fountain  flows, 

Or  purple  heath  is  ting'd  in  vain : 
For  such  the  rivers  dash  the  foamy  tides, 
The  mountain  swells,  the  dale  subsides  ; 
E'en  thriftless  furze  detains  their  wandering  sight, 
And  the  rough  barren  rock  grows  pregnant  with  delight. 

This  is  his  best  Nature  poem,  and  stands  quite  alone. 

To  Dr.  James  Grainger,  the  author  of  Solitude,  a 
feeble  ode  ludicrously  overpraised  by  Johnson,  and 
the  Sugar-  Cane,  a  didactic  poem  on  the  therne 
indicated,  a  place  among  those  who  contributed  to  the 
Romantic  movement  belongs  by  courtesy.  David 
Mallet,  who  is  now  remembered  chiefly  for  his  really 
beautiful  ballad,  IVilliam  and  Margaret,  was  as  a 
descriptive  poet,  that  is,  as  the  author  of  The  Excursion, 
published  in  1728,  and  of  a  long  narrative  poem  in 


176  POETS'  COUNTRY 

blank  verse  (1747),  an  imitator  of  Thomson,  but  has 
left  no  passage  worth  quoting.  It  is  somewhat  startling 
to  find  the  author  of  Peregrine  Pickk  and  of  Roderick 
Random  among  the  poets  of  Nature,  and  yet  he  has 
feelingly  celebrated  the  charms  of  Leven  Water  : — 

Pure  stream,  in  whose  transparent  wave 

My  youthful  limbs  I  wont  to  lave ; 

No  torrents  stain  thy  limpid  source, 

No  rocks  impede  thy  dimpling  course, 

That  sweetly  warbles  o'er  its  bed, 

With  white,  round,  polish'd  pebbles  spread  ; 

While,  lightly  pois'd,  the  scaly  brood 

In  myriads  cleave  thy  crystal  flood  ; 

The  springing  trout  in  speckled  pride, 

The  salmon,  monarch  of  the  tide  ; 

The  ruthless  pike,  intent  on  war, 

The  silver  eel,  and  mottled  par. 

Devolving  from  thy  parent  lake, 

A  charming  maze  thy  waters  make, 

By  bowers  of  birch,  and  groves  of  pine, 

And  edges  flowered  with  eglantine. 

It  is  when  we  place  a  poem  like  this  beside  Words- 
worth's Lines  to  a  Highland  Girl  that  we  can  measure 
the  whole  distance  between  the  realism  of  the  eighteenth 
century  at  its  best  and  elements  imported  into  that 
poetry  by  the  genius  of  Romanticism. 


GOLDSMITH,   COLLINS,  AND   GRAY 

WE  have  now  arrived  at  the  three  poets  who  are 
pre-eminent  during  the  period  which  extends  from  the 
death  of  Pope  to  the  appearance  of  Wordsworth  and 
Coleridge,  who  have  enriched  our  poetry  with  some  of 
the  most  precious  contributions  which  have  ever  been 
made  to  it,  and  who  may  be  regarded  in  various  ways 
and  from  different  points  of  view  as  the  initiators  of 
modern  poetry  in  some  of  its  most  exquisite  manifesta- 
tions. In  dealing  with  them  here  it  will  be  necessary 
to  confine  ourselves  strictly  to  their  descriptive  poetry, 
and  as  far  as  possible  to  treat  it  in  relation  to  the 
scenes  which  suggested  and  inspired  it.  In  the  case 
of  Goldsmith  and  Gray  this  can  be  done  fully  and 
satisfactorily ;  in  the  case  of  Collins  this  is  not  always 
easy. 

Goldsmith  marks  with  singular  preciseness  the 
transition  from  the  poetry  characteristic  of  the 
eighteenth  century  to  that  characteristic  of  the 
nineteenth,  but  he  belongs  much  more  to  the  first 
than  to  the  second.  His  Traveller  appeared  in  1764. 

177  N 


178  POETS'  COUNTRY 

his  Deserted  Village  in  1770.  Except  in  the  infusion 
of  sentiment,  the  world  of  The  Traveller  is  the  world 
of  Addison's  Epistle  from  Italy  and  Pope's  Windsor 
Forest.  The  ethical  element  completely  predominates 
over  the  scenic  and  picturesque.  Simplicity  and 
humanity  are  there,  but  there  only  occasionally.  Man 
is  contemplated  not  so  much  individually  and  in  relation 
to  himself  as  socially  and  politically.  The  style  is 
pointed  and  epigrammatic,  and  has  the  note  of  rhetoric. 
But  in  The  Deserted  Village  this  is  reversed.  What  is 
occasional  and  more  or  less  accidental  in  the  other  poem 
is  here  ubiquitous  and  of  the  essence  of  the  work.  It 
is  the  heart  speaking  to  the  heart,  and  in  essentials  all 
as  a  rule  is  simplicity  and  nature ;  it  is  only  here  and 
there  that  the  old  falsetto  jars  on  us.  The  politics  of 
the  poem  spring  out  of  its  humanity. 

It  was  well  said  by  Campbell  that  "  fiction  in  poetry 
is  not  the  reverse  of  truth,  but  her  soft  and  enchanted 
resemblance,"  and  this  ideal  beauty  of  Nature  has  seldom 
been  united  with  so  much  sober  fidelity  as  in  the  groups 
and  scenery  of  The  Deserted  Village.  Macaulay  com- 
plains that  The  Deserted  Village,  being  as  it  is  a  picture 
blended  from  reminiscences  of  Lissoy  and  of  some  typical 
English  village,  presumably  in  Kent,  is  incongruous  and 
unreal.  It  is  fortunate  for  Macaulay  that  his  reputation 
does  not  depend  on  his  criticisms  of  poetry.  There  can 
be  no  doubt  at  all  that  Auburn  was  in  the  main  drawn 
from  Lissoy,  where  Goldsmith  passed  his  boyhood,  that 
it  was  founded  on  fact,  and  that  its  scenery  and  its 


STOKE   POGES   MANOR 

Stoke  Poges  Manor,  adjoining  the  churchyard,  was  for  a 
time  the  residence  of  Gray.  It  dates  from  the  Edwards' 
time,  and  contrasts  with  the  scenes  of  the  Elegy. 


GOLDSMITH,  COLLINS,  AND   GRAY  179 

associations  were  those  with  which  Goldsmith,  when 
living  at  Lissoy,  was  familiar.  This  is  placed  beyond 
doubt  by  Dr.  Strean — he  was  the  successor  of  Henry 
Goldsmith,  the  poet's  brother,  in  the  curacy  of  Kilkenny 
West — who  in  a  letter  to  Edward  Mangin,  dated 
December  1807,  writes  as  follows.  The  letter  is  quoted 
by  Forster,  but  must  be  given  here  : — 

The  poem  of  The  Deserted  Village  took  its  origin  from  the 
circumstance  of  General  Robert  Napper  (the  grandfather  of  the 
gentleman  who  now  lives  in  the  house,  within  half  a  mile  of 
Lissoy,  and  built  by  the  General)  having  purchased  an  extensive 
tract  of  the  country  surrounding  Lissoy  or  Auburn ;  in  consequence 
of  which  many  families  here  called  colliers  were  removed  to  make 
room  for  the  intended  improvements  of  what  was  now  to  become 
the  domain  of  a  rich  man,  warm  with  the  idea  of  changing  the 
face  of  his  new  acquisition  ;  and  were  forced  "  with  fainting  steps  " 
to  go  in  search  of  "  torrid  tracts  "  and  "  distant  climes."  This  fact 
alone  might  be  supposed  to  establish  the  seat  of  the  poem ;  but 
there  cannot  remain  a  doubt  in  any  unprejudiced  mind  when  the 
following  are  added,  viz.  that  the  character  of  the  village 
preacher,  the  above-named  Henry,  is  copied  from  nature.  He  is 
described  exactly  as  he  lived,  and  his  "modest  mansion"  as  it 
existed.  Burn,  the  name  of  the  village  master,  and  the  site  of  his 
school-house ;  and  Catherine  Giraghty,  a  lonely  widow — 

The  wretched  matron,  forc'd  in  age  for  bread 

To  strip  the  brook  with  mantling  cresses  spread — 

(and  to  this  day  the  brook  and  ditches  near  the  spot  where  her 
cabin  stood  abound  with  cresses),  still  remain  in  the  memory  of 
the  inhabitants,  and  Catherine's  children  live  in  the  neighbourhood. 
The  pool,  the  busy  mill,  the  house  "where  nut-brown  draughts 
inspired,"  are  still  visited  on  the  poetic  scene ;  and  the  "  hawthorn 
bush,"  growing  in  an  open  space  in  front  of  the  house,  which  I 


180  POETS'  COUNTRY 

knew  to  have  three  trunks,  is  now  reduced  to  one ;  the  other  two 
having  been  cut,  from  time  to  time,  by  persons  carrying  pieces  of 
it  away  to  be  made  into  toys,  etc.,  in  honour  of  the  bard  and  of 
the  celebrity  of  his  poem.  All  these  contribute  to  the  same 
proof;  and  the  "decent  church,"  which  I  attended  for  upwards  of 
eighteen  years,  and  which  "  tops  the  neighbouring  hill,""  is  exactly 
described  as  seen  from  Lissoy,  the  residence  of  the  preacher. 

This  was  written  only  thirty -three  years  after 
Goldsmith's  death,  the  position  of  the  writer  as  curate 
of  Kilkenny  West  and  successor  of  Henry  Goldsmith 
being  sufficient  guarantee  for  his  accuracy.  In  or  about 
1846  William  Howitt  visited  the  place,  and  found  it  all 
ruins,  squalor,  and  desolation.  But  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  as  Goldsmith  sat  in  his  Chambers  at  Brick 
Court,  with  anxieties  and  difficulties  accumulating 
round  him,  and  death  not  so  very  far  away,  his  memory 
wandered  back  to  these  early  scenes.  "Whatever 
vicissitudes  we  experience  in  life" — he  had  written 
some  years  before — "however  we  toil  or  wheresoever 
we  wander,  our  fatigued  wishes  still  recur  to  home  for 
tranquillity  :  we  long  to  die  in  that  spot  which  gave  us 
birth,  and  in  that  pleasing  expectation  we  find  an  opiate 
for  every  calamity." l  No  doubt 

Remembrance  woke  with  all  its  busy  train, 
Swell'd  at  his  heart,  and  turned  the  past  to  pain, 

and  imagination  glorified  and  consecrated  what  memory 
recalled.  We  need  not  suspect  the  intervention  of  any 

1  Citizen  of  the  World,  ciii. 


GOLDSMITH,  COLLINS,  AND   GRAY    181 

English  village  as  Forster  and  others  do.  Lissoy  and 
Lissoy  only  was  in  his  mind,  but  it  was  the  Lissoy  of 
his  youth  and  of  his  dreams. 

It  may  be  doubted  whether  Nature  in  the  abstract 
had  much  attraction  for  Goldsmith,  whether  its  mere 
phenomena  in  themselves  had  power  to  charm  him.  In 
his  novel  and  in  his  History  of  Animated  Nature  there 
are  many  delightful  touches  of  description,  but  with 
him  Nature  is  always  associated  with  man  and  with 
animal  life. 

The  first  published  poem  by  Collins,  the  Persian 
Eclogues,  gave  no  promise  of  the  poems  on  which  his 
fame  rests  and  which  stand  absolutely  alone  in  the 
poetry  of  the  eighteenth  century,  anticipating  all  that  is 
most  exquisite  in  the  lyric  of  Coleridge  and  in  the  lyric 
of  Tennyson.  A  critic  who  should  be  confronted  with 
such  a  passage  as  this  : — 

With  eyes  uprais'd,  as  one  inspired, 

Pale  Melancholy  sat  retired ; 

And  from  her  wild  sequestered  seat, 

In  notes  by  distance  made  more  sweet, 
Poured  through  the  mellow  horn  her  pensive  soul : 

And  dashing  soft  from  rocks  around, 

Bubbling  runnels  join'd  the  sound  ; 
Through  glades  and  glooms  the  mingled  measure  stole  : 

Or  o'er  some  haunted  spring,  with  fond  delay, 

Round  an  holy  calm  diffusing, 

Love  of  peace  and  lonely  musing, 

In  hollow  murmurs  died  away — 

might  well  be  forgiven  for  pronouncing  that  such  a 
passage  was  an  impossibility  in  the  poetry  of  the  middle 


182  POETS'  COUNTRY 

eighteenth  century.  Yet  so  it  was :  till  Tennyson 
appeared  no  such  magical  note  had  been  sounded  in 
descriptive  poetry.  Collins  was  born  at  Chichester  in 
December  1721.  In  1742,  just  after  he  left  Oxford, 
he  published  the  Persian  Eclogues,  and  in  December 
1746  the  golden  volume  of  his  Odes.  It  is  in  the  Ode 
to  Evening  and  the  Ode  on  the  Death  of  Thomson  that 
he  appears  as  the  poet  of  Nature.  Can  they  be 
localised  ?  Whoever  is  acquainted  with  the  neighbour- 
hood of  Chichester,  and  has  wandered  along  the  roads 
through  the  fields  there  when  the  shades  of  evening 
are  falling,  will  have  no  difficulty  in  understanding  what 
suggested  and  what  inspired  this  incomparable  sketch  : — 

O  nymph  reserved,  while  now  the  bright-haired  sun 
Sits  in  yon  Western  tent,  whose  cloudy  skirts, 

With  brede  ethereal  wove, 

O'erhang  his  wavy  bed  : 

Now  air  is  hush'd,  save  where  the  weak-eyed  bat, 
With  short  shrill  shriek,  flits  by  on  leathern  wing; 

Or  where  the  beetle  winds 

His  small  but  sullen  horn, 

As  oft  he  rises  'midst  the  twilight  path, 
Against  the  pilgrim  borne  in  heedless  hum. 

It  ought  not  to  be  forgotten  that  Collins  revised 
this  Ode,  and  in  this  revision,  for  the  stanza  which  ran  in 
the  first  edition  and  which  is  commonly  printed  now : — 

Then  let  me  rove  some  wild  and  heathy  scene, 
Or  find  some  ruin  'midst  its  dreary  dells, 

Whose  walls  more  awful  nod 

By  thy  religious  gleams. 


THE   HALL  OF  STOKE   MANOR 

The  coat-of-arms  over  the  fireplace  is  of  the  Hastings 
family,  and  may  have  suggested  the  lines  : — 

The  boast  of  heraldry,  the  pomp  of  pow'r, 
And  all  that  beauty,  all  that  wealth  e'er  gave, 
Awaits  alike  th'  inevitable  hour. 
The  paths  of  glory  lead  but  to  the  grave. 

Elegy. 


GOLDSMITH,  COLLINS,  AND   GRAY    183 

was  substituted : — 

Then  lead,  calm  votaress,  where  some  sheety  lake 
Cheers  the  lone  heath,  or  some  time-hallow'd  pile, 

Or  upland  fallows  grey 

Reflect  its  last  cool  gleam. 

In  the  next  stanzas  he  blends  what  is  characteristic 
of  Chichester  scenery  with  such  a  prospect  as  we  might 
have  from  Ben  Lomond  or  Snowdon  : — 

But  when  chill  blustering  winds,  or  driving  rain, 
Prevent  my  willing  feet,  be  mine  the  hut 

That  from  the  mountain's  side 

Views  wilds  and  swelling  floods, 

And  hamlets  brown,  and  dim-discover'd  spires, 
And  hears  their  simple  bell,  and  marks  o'er  all 

Thy  dewy  fingers  draw 

The  gradual  dusky  veil. 

In  the  Ode  on  the  Death  of  Thomson  he  conducts 
to  the  scene  which  Thomson  himself  had  so  vividly 
described — the  scene  of  the  Thames  and  the  meadows 
from  Richmond  Hill : — 

Remembrance  oft  shall  haunt  the  shore, 
When  Thames  in  summer  wreaths  is  drest ; 

And  oft  suspend  the  dashing  oar, 
To  bid  his  gentle  spirit  rest ! 

And  oft  as  ease  and  health  retire 

To  breezy  lawn,  or  forest  deep, 
The  friend  shall  view  yon  whitening  spire, 

And  'mid  the  varied  landscape  weep.1 

1  Richmond  Church. 


184  POETS'  COUNTRY 

But  them,  lorn  stream,  whose  sullen  tide 
No  sedge-crown' d  Sisters  now  attend, 

Now  waft  me  from  the  green  hill's  side 
Whose  cold  turf  hides  the  buried  friend  I 

And  see,  the  fairy  valleys  fade, 

Dun  night  has  veiled  the  solemn  view ! 

Yet  once  again,  dear  parted  Shade, 
Meek  Nature's  Child,  again  adieu ! 

The  genial  meads,  assign'd  to  bless 
Thy  life,  shall  mourn  thy  early  doom ! 

Their  herds  and  shepherd  girls  shall  dress 
With  simple  hands  thy  rural  tomb. 

Long,  long  thy  stone  and  pointed  clay 
Shall  melt  the  musing  Briton's  eyes  : 

O  vales  and  wild  woods,  shall  he  say, 
In  yonder  grave  your  Druid  lies  ! 

Whether  Collins  ever  visited  the  Highlands  of 
Scotland  does  not  appear,  but  there  are  fine  touches 
of  description,  the  truthfulness  of  which  has  often  been 
commented  on,  in  his  Ode  on  the  Superstitions  in  the 
Scottish  Highlands.  It  is  said  that  he  designed  to  write 
a  series  of  scenes  from  Nature,  after  the  manner  of  the 
Ode  to  Evening,  but  that  the  miserable  indifference  of 
his  contemporaries  to  his  Odes — which,  in  consequence, 
he  indignantly  bought  up  and  destroyed  so  far  as  he 
could  procure  them — prevented  this  and  other  projects. 
Criticism  abounds  in  curiosities,  and  strange  indeed 
have  been  the  mismeasurements  which  contemporary 
men  of  genius  have  made  of  each  other,  but  that  Gray 
should  not  have  seen  the  extraordinary  merit  of  Collins' 
lyrics  is  inexplicable.  Yet  so  it  was.  "Have  you 


GOLDSMITH,  COLLINS,  AND   GRAY    185 

seen,"  he  writes  to  his  friend  Wharton,  "  the  work  of 
two  young  authors,  a  Mr.  Warton  and  a  Mr.  Collins, 
both  writers  of  Odes  ? " — he  is  referring  to  Joseph 
Warton 's  Odes,  which  came  out  at  the  same  time  as 
Collins's — "  It  is  odd  enough,  but  each  is  the  half  of  a 
considerable  man,  and  one  the  counterpart  of  the  other. 
The  first  has  but  little  invention,  very  poetical  choice 
of  expression,  and  a  good  ear ;  the  second  a  fine  fancy 
modelled  upon  the  antique,  a  bad  ear,  great  variety  of 
words  and  images,  and  no  choice  at  all.  They  both 
deserve  to  last  some  years,  but  will  not." 

What  Weston  was  to  Cowper,  Stoke  Pogis  was  to 
Gray.  A  visit  to  the  churchyard  and  its  immediate 
neighbourhood  is  even  now  the  best  of  all  commentaries 
on  the  Ode  on  the  Spring,  Ode  on  the  Distant  Prospect 
of  Eton,  on  The  Long  Story,  and  on  the  Elegy.  His 
mother's  life  had  been  a  very  unhappy  one,  and  leaving 
her  husband  she  had  joined  her  sister  Mary  Antrobus 
in  setting  up  a  kind  of  India  warehouse  in  Cornhill. 
The  business  prospered,  her  husband  died,  and  the  two 
sisters,  in  October  1742,  went  to  live  with  a  widowed 
sister,  a  Mrs.  Rogers,  at  Stoke  Pogis,  in  Buckingham, 
which  is  about  three  miles  from  Slough.  The  house 
in  which  they  lived  was  called  West  End  House,  and 
was  situated  in  the  northern  end  of  the  parish,  and  is 
within  a  mile  or  so  of  Burnham  Beeches.  It  was  a 
farmhouse,  two  storeys  high,  with  a  rustic  porch  over 
the  door,  and  it  stood  in  a  hollow  screened  by  trees. 
A  small  stream  ran  through  the  garden,  and  on  one 


186  POETS'  COUNTRY 

side  of  the  cottage  extended  an  upland  field,  at  the 
summit  of  which  was  an  artificial  mound  with  a 
summer-house  upon  it  giving  a  full  prospect  of  Eton 
and  Windsor.  All,  unhappily,  is  changed  now :  the 
cottage  has  disappeared,  with  it  the  garden,  and  a 
modern  Elizabethan  mansion  with  proportionately  ex- 
tensive grounds  has  taken  its  place.  But  it  is  with 
the  church  and  the  scenery  round  it  that  Gray  is  more 
particularly  associated ;  this,  happily,  is  very  little 
changed.  The  church,  which  is  dedicated  to  St.  Giles, 
is  a  small  Gothic  structure,  situated  on  the  edge  of  a 
slight  ridge  which  continues  eastward  and  westward  on 
either  side,  and  slopes  gradually  southward  towards  the 
Thames.  A  few  years  ago  the  church  had  a  wooden 
spire  prettily  overgrown,  as  Gray  described  it,  with  ivy  ; 
but  this  is  now  gone.  Trees,  chiefly  elms  and  Scotch 
firs,  tower  up  on  each  side  of  the  churchyard,  and 
opposite  the  porch  are  two  very  old  yew  trees,  in  the 
shade  of  which  the  turf  still  "heaves"  with  nameless 
graves.  We  have  only  to  take  away  the  wall  dividing 
the  churchyard  from  Stoke  Park,  and  this  in  Gray's 
time  did  not  exist,  to  restore  the  landscape  as  it  met 
his  eyes.  From  the  churchyard  to  West  End  there  was 
a  path  still  open  to  pedestrians  across  the  meadows 
on  by  the  lane  leading  to  Stoke  Common.  But 
the  neighbourhood  was  familiar  to  Gray  some  years 
before  his  mother  settled  there,  for  he  used  to 
stay,  while  still  a  schoolboy  at  Eton  and  an  under- 
graduate at  Cambridge,  with  his  uncle  at  Britweil, 


THE   POETS'    WALK   AT  ETON 

The  Poets'   Walk,  Eton  College  grounds,  is  associated 
with  the  names  of  Gray  and  Walpole— their  favourite  walk. 


GOLDSMITH,  COLLINS,  AND   GRAY    187 

near  Burnham.     Thus  we  find  him  writing  to  Walpole 
in  1737  :— 

My  comfort  amid  all  this  is  that  I  have,  at  the  distance  of  half 
a  mile  through  a  green  lane,  a  forest — the  vulgar  call  it  a  common 
— all  my  own,  at  least  as  good  as  so,  for  I  spy  no  human  being 
in  it  but  myself.  It  is  a  little  chaos  of  mountains  and  precipices  ; 
mountains,  it  is  true,  that  do  not  ascend  much  above  the  clouds, 
nor  are  the  declivities  quite  as  amazing  as  Dover  Cliff,  but  just 
such  hills  as  people  who  love  their  necks  as  well  as  I  do  may 
venture  to  climb,  and  crags  that  give  the  eye  as  much  pleasure  as 
if  they  were  more  dangerous.  Both  vale  and  hill  are  covered  with 
most  venerable  beeches  and  other  very  reverend  vegetables,  that, 
like  most  other  people,  are  always  dreaming  over  their  old  stories 
to  the  winds. 

And  as  they  bow  their  hoary  tops  relate, 

In  murm'ring  sounds,  the  dark  decrees  of  Fate ; 

While  visions,  as  poetic  eyes  avow, 

Cling  to  each  leaf,  and  swarm  on  every  bough. 

At  the  foot  of  one  of  these  squats  me,  I,  il  penseroso,  and  there 
grow  to  the  trunk  for  a  whole  morning.  The  timorous  hare  and 
sportive  squirrel  gambol  around  me  like  Adam  in  Paradise,  before 
he  had  his  Eve ;  but  I  think  he  did  not  use  to  read  Virgil,  as  I 
commonly  do  here. 

After  his  mother  settled  at  West  End  House,  Gray 
spent  all  his  vacations  with  her,  regularly  coming  from 
Cambridge.  It  was  here  he  studied  and  meditated. 
The  feud  with  Walpole  and  the  death  of  his  beloved 
friend,  Richard  West,  initiated  him  in  life's  saddening 
experiences ;  then  came  the  death  of  his  aunt,  Mary 
Antrobus  in  1749,  which  is  said  to  have  induced  him 
to  finish  the  Elegy,  begun  some  years  before.  It  is 


188  POETS'  COUNTRY 

interesting  to  note  how  the  inspiration  of  all  his  early 
poems  came  from  what  met  his  eyes  or  was  suggested 
by  what  occupied  his  mind  at  Stoke.  His  earliest 
extant  poem  is  the  Ode  on  Spring.  Its  scenery  is 
photographed  from  the  garden  at  West  End  and  in 
Stoke  Park  :— 

Where'er  the  oak's  thick  branches  stretch 

A  broader  browner  shade  ; 
Where'er  the  rude  and  moss-grown  beech 

O'ercanopies  the  glade ; 
Beside  some  water's  rushy  brink 
With  me  the  Muse  shall  sit — 

and  there  is  not  a  touch  in  the  poem  which  might  not 
have  been  suggested  by  what  surrounded  him.  Can 
we  doubt  that  his  first  printed  poem,  the  Ode  on  a 
Distant  Prospect  of  Eton,  occurred  to  him  as  he 
meditated  with  that  prospect  actually  before  him  in 
the  little  summer-house — still  discernible  both  from 
Skinner's  Pond  Field  and  the  Pond  Field  ? 

Ye  distant  spires,  ye  antique  towers, 
That  crown  the  watery  glade. 

And  ye,  that  from  the  stately  brow 
Of  Windsor's  heights  th'  expanse  below 

Of  grove,  of  lawn,  of  mead  survey ; 
Whose  turf,  whose  shade,  whose  flowers  among 
Wanders  the  hoary  Thames  along 

His  silver- winding  way ! 

The  scenery  of  the  Elegy  was  a  literal  transcript  to 
the  minutest  detail  of  what  he  could  see  any  evening 
as  he  stood  in  the  churchyard,  and  the  magical  power 


STOKE   POGES   CHURCHYARD 

The  yew-trees  in  Stoke  Poges  churchyard,  said  to  be 
nine  hundred  years  old,  are  undoubtedly  those  referred  to 
in  the  Elegy  : — 

Beneath  those  rugged  elms,  that  yew-tree's  shade, 
Where  heaves  the  turf  in  many  a  mould'ring  heap, 
Each  in  his  narrow  cell  for  ever  laid, 
The  rude  Forefathers  of  the  hamlet  sleep. 


GOLDSMITH,  COLLINS,  AND   GRAY    189 

with  which  the  very  soul  of  the  scene  passed  in  quint- 
essence into  the  poem  may  still  be  felt  by  any  one  who 
will,  as  evening  falls,  visit  the  spot.  Here  may  still 
be  heard  "  the  drowsy  tinklings  "  "  lulling  "  "  the  dis- 
tant folds  "  ;  may  be  seen 

The  yew-tree's  shade, 
Where  heaves  the  turf  in  many  a  mouldering  heap, 

The  nodding  beech 
That  wreathes  its  old  fantastic  roots  so  high. 

Nor  have  we  to  go  far  either  for  "  the  upland  lawn," 
"  the  green-wood  side "  of  the  rejected  stanza  or  for 
the  "  babbling  brook."  It  has  been  suggested  that  the 
churchyard  of  the  village  of  Upton,  which  is  about  a 
mile  to  the  north-east  of  Windsor,  was  the  scene  of  the 
Ekgy,  on  the  ground  that  elm  trees  abound  there, 
whereas  Scotch  firs  predominate  at  Stoke  Pogis.  To 
this  it  may  be  answered  that  the  Scotch  firs  have  sprung 
up  since  Gray's  time,  and  that  as  elms  abound  in  the 
park,  they  probably  preceded  the  firs. 

Near  the  south-east  window  of  Stoke  Church,  on  a 
plain  brick  altar  tomb,  may  be  read  an  inscription  from 
Gray's  pen : — 

In  the  vault  beneath  are  deposited,  in  hope  of  a  joyful  resur- 
rection, the  remains  of  Mary  Antrobus.  She  died  unmarried, 
Nov.  5,  1749,  aged  sixty-six.  In  the  same  pious  confidence,  beside 
her  friend  and  sister,  here  sleep  the  remains  of  Dorothy  Gray, 
widow ;  the  tender,  careful  mother  of  many  children,  one  of  whom 
alone  had  the  misfortune  to  survive  her.  She  died  March  11, 
1753,  aged  sixty-seven. 

Of  Gray  himself,  though  he  rests  in  the  same  tomb, 


190  POETS'  COUNTRY 

no  word  is  said.  But  these  are  not  the  only  associa- 
tions with  Gray  at  Stoke  Pogis.  As  we  stand  on  the 
south  side  of  the  churchyard,  just  at  the  entrance,  we 
see  through  the  trees  of  the  Park,  on  the  right,  two 
chimneys.  If  we  make  our  way  to  them,  which  we  can 
do  by  a  pathway  running  parallel  with  the  church  wall, 
we  see  that  they  belong  to  a  venerable,  ivy-draped 
building.  This  is  one  wing,  all  that  remains  of  the  old 
Stoke  Manor,  once  a  fine  Gothic  mansion  with  high 
gables,  projecting  windows,  built  in  1555  by  the  Earl  of 
Huntingdon,  and  occupied  successively,  so  tradition 
says,  by  Sir  Christopher  Hatton,  though  this  is  doubtful, 
and  by  Sir  Edward  Coke,  who,  in  1601,  entertained 
Queen  Elizabeth  there.  In  Gray's  time  it  was  the 
residence  of  the  Viscountess  Cobham.  In  1789,  when 
the  present  Stoke  Park  was  built,  all  but  the  wing  pre- 
served was  demolished.  It  is  interesting  to  know  that 
for  some  time  it  was  fitted  up  as  a  studio  for  Sir  Edwin 
Landseer,  and  it  was  when  at  work  here  in  1852  that 
he  suddenly  became  deranged.  A  call  made  on  Gray 
by  two  relatives  of  Lady  Cobham's,  Miss  Speed  and 
Lady  Schaub,  who  were  staying  with  her,  was  the 
occasion  of  his  poem,  The  Long  Story. 

In  a  recent  visit  to  Stoke  Pogis,  I  was  sorry  to  see 
that  the  hand  of  "improvement"  had  been  busy,  and 
that  both  the  church  and  churchyard  are  becoming 
most  disgustingly  trim  and  modern.  Surely  every 
alteration  is  a  mistake.  In  a  place  with  such  associa- 
tions, conservatism  can  scarcely  be  carried  too  far. 


THE  CENOTAPH  AT  STOKE  POGES* 

On  the  cenotaph  at  Stoke  Poges,  the  scene  of  Gray's 
Elegy,  is  inscribed  the  lines  : — 

Haply  some  hoary-headed  swain  may  say, 
Oft  have  we  seen  him  at  the  peep  of  dawn 
Brushing  with  hasty  steps  the  dews  away 
To  meet  the  sun  upon  the  upland  lawn. 


FALCONER  AND   MARINE   SCENERY, 
MASON,   THE   WARTONS,   AND   BEATTIE 

WITH  very  little  education,  uncultivated  taste,  and 
with  Pope's  Homer  for  his  model  of  style  and  verse, 
Falconer  essayed  to  record  his  experiences  as  a  sailor, 
and  has  produced  a  poem  which  stands  absolutely  alone 
in  our  poetry.  The  contrast  between  the  truth  and 
vividness  of  his  descriptions  and  his  vicious  diction, 
with  its  cheap  pomp  and  stilted  artificiality,  is  some- 
times startling  even  to  ludicrousness.  And  yet  the 
merits  of  his  poem  are  really  great :  it  is  excellently 
constructed — an  epic,  with  the  conflict  between  man's 
skill  and  courage  and  the  power  of  the  terrible  element 
in  collision  with  it  for  its  theme.  In  the  first  canto 
man  musters  his  forces,  and  the  crew  and  the  ship  are 
described ;  in  the  second,  man  is  confronted  with  his 
adversary,  and  the  sea  and  a  ship's  ordinary  experiences 
on  it  are  detailed ;  in  the  third,  off  Cape  Colonna,  battle 
is  joined,  and  man  has  lost.  All  Falconer's  descriptions 
are  drawn  from  experience ;  they  have,  like  Crabbe's, 
the  merit  of  truth.  He  was  himself  the  second  mate  of 

191 


192  POETS'  COUNTRY 

a  vessel  employed  in  the  Levant  trade,  and  was  ship- 
wrecked in  a  passage  from  Alexandria  to  Venice,  three 
only  of  the  crew  being  saved.  By  a  tragical  irony  the 
poet  of  the  shipwreck  perished  by  shipwreck.  He 
sailed  from  England  on  the  Aurora  in  September 
1769.  After  they  left  the  Cape  nothing  more 
was  heard  of  her,  not  a  vestige  being  found ;  it  is 
supposed  that  she  went  down  in  the  Mozambique 
Channel. 

In  selecting  two  or  three  of  Falconer's  descriptions, 
I  will  not  mark  the  omissions  by  asterisks.  Let  us  take 
first  the  rising  and  effects  of  a  sudden  squall :  — 

But  see !  in  confluence  borne  before  the  blast, 
Clouds  roll'd  on  cloud,  the  dusky  moon  o'ercast : 
The  blackening  ocean  curls,  the  winds  arise, 
And  the  dark  scud  in  swift  succession  flies. 
Four  hours  the  Sun  his  high  meridian  throne 
Had  left,  and  o'er  Atlantic  regions  shone  ; 
Still  blacker  clouds,  that  all  the  skies  invade, 
Draw  o'er  his  sullied  orb  a  dismal  shade  : 
A  lowering  squall  obscures  the  southern  sky, 
Before  whose  sweeping  breath  the  waters  fly. 
It  comes  resistless  !  and  with  foamy  sweep 
Upturns  the  whitening  surface  of  the  deep : 
The  clouds,  with  ruin  pregnant,  now  impend, 
And  storm  and  cataracts  tumultuous  blend. 
Deep,  on  her  side,  the  reeling  vessel  lies : 
Brail  up  the  mizen  quick  !  the  master  cries, 
Man  the  clue-garnets  !     Let  the  main-sheet  fly  ! 
It  rends  in  thousand  shivering  shreds  on  high ! 
The  main-sail,  all  in  streaming  ruins  tore, 
Loud  fluttering,  imitates  the  thunder's  roar. 

Canto  II. 


FALCONER  193 

The  following  are  from  the  last  scene  : — • 

High  o'er  the  poop  th'  audacious  seas  aspire, 

Uproll'd  in  hills  of  fluctuating  fire  ; 

With  lab'ring  throes  she  rolls  on  either  side, 

And  dips  her  gunnels  in  the  yawning  tide. 

The  gale  howls  doleful  through  the  blocks  and  shrouds, 

And  big  rain  pours  a  deluge  from  the  clouds. 

In  vain  the  cords  and  axes  were  prepar'd, 
For  every  wave  now  smites  the  quivering  yard ; 
High  o'er  the  ship  they  throw  a  dreadful  shade, 
Then  on  her  burst  in  terrible  cascade ; 
Across  the  founder'd  deck  o'erwhelming  roar, 
And  foaming,  swelling,  bound  upon  the  shore. 
Swift  up  the  mounting  billow  now  she  flies, 
Her  shatter'd  top  half-buried  in  the  skies. 

Canto  III. 

Take,  too,  the  picture  of  a  shoal  of  dolphin  : — 

But  now,  beneath  the  lofty  vessel's  stern, 
A  shoal  of  sportive  dolphins  they  discern 
Beaming  from  burnish'd  scales  refulgent  rays, 
Till  all  the  glowing  ocean  seems  to  blaze : 
In  curling  wreaths  they  wanton  on  the  tide, 
Now  bound  aloft,  now  downward  swiftly  glide ; 
Awhile  beneath  the  waves  their  tracks  remain, 
And  burn  in  silver  streams  along  the  liquid  plain. 

Canto  II. 

Not  without  beauty,  if  of  a  somewhat  commonplace 
order,  is  another  of  his  marine  scenes  : — 

The  sun's  bright  orb,  declining  all  serene, 
Now  glanc'd  obliquely  o'er  the  woodlaiid  scene : 
The  glassy  ocean  hush'd  forgets  to  roar, 
But  trembling  murmurs  on  the  sandy  shore  : 


194  POETS'  COUNTRY 

And  lo !  his  surface  lovely  to  behold 
Glows  in  the  west,  a  sea  of  living  gold ! 
While,  all  above,  a  thousand  liveries  gay 
The  skies  with  pomp  ineffable  array. 

Canto  I. 

William  Mason  is  now  chiefly,  perhaps  only, 
remembered  as  the  friend  and  biographer  of  Gray. 
But  in  the  history  of  descriptive  poetry  he  holds  a 
conspicuous  place,  for  his  English  Garden,  an  elaborate 
poem  in  four  books,  places  us  in  the  midst  of  the 
controversy  between  the  votaries  of  Art  and  the  votaries 
of  Nature  in  the  science  of  landscape-gardening,  re- 
presented on  the  one  hand  by  William  Kemp,  Lancelot 
Brown  and  their  school,  and  on  the  other  by  the 
Chinese  vagaries  of  Sir  William  Chambers  and  his 
followers.  The  controversy  had  arisen  early  in  the 
century.  Pope  had  led  the  reaction  against  the  Dutch 
style  and  the  formality  of  Le  Notre,  and  had  ridiculed 
the  gardens  where 

No  pleasing  intricacies  intervene, 

No  artful  wildness  to  perplex  the  scene ; 

and  where 

Grove  nods  at  grove,  each  alley  has  a  brother, 
And  half  the  platform  just  reflects  the  other. 

Brown  and  Kemp,  with  their  disciples,  had  revolu- 
tionised all  this,  substituting  not  Art  for  Nature,  but 
calling  Art  to  the  assistance  of  Nature.  The  principles 
on  which  they  proceeded  are,  at  least  from  a  technical 
point  of  view,  described  so  well  by  Mason  that  the 
passage  may  be  transcribed  : — 


MASON  195 

Of  Nature's  various  scenes  the  painter  culls 

That  for  his  fav'rite  theme,  where  the  fair  whole 

Is  broken  into  ample  parts,  and  bold ; 

Where  to  the  eye  three  well-mark'd  distances 

Spread  their  peculiar  colouring — vivid  green, 

Warm  brown,  and  black  opaque  the  foreground  bears 

Conspicuous  ;  sober  olive  coldly  marks 

The  second  distance  ;  thence  the  third  declines 

In  softer  blue,  or,  less'ning  still,  is  lost 

In  faintest  purple.     When  thy  taste  is  call'd 

To  adorn  a  scene  where  Nature's  self  presents 

All  these  distinct  gradations,  then  rejoice, 

As  does  the  painter,  and,  like  him,  apply 

Thy  colours :  plant  thou  on  each  separate  part 

Its  proper  foliage.     Chief,  for  there  thy  skill 

Has  its  chief  scope,  enrich  with  all  the  hues 

That  flowers,  that  shrubs,  that  trees  can  yield,  the  sides 

Of  that  fair  path  from  whence  our  sight  is  led 

Gradual  to  view  the  whole.     Where'er  thou  wind'st 

That  path,  take  heed  between  the  scene  and  eye 

To  vary  and  to  mix  thy  chosen  greens. 

Here  for  a  while  with  cedar  and  with  larch, 

That  from  the  ground  spread  their  close  foliage,  hide 

The  view  entire.     Then  o'er  some  lowly  tuft 

Where  rose  and  woodbine  bloom,  permit  its  charms 

To  burst  upon  the  sight :  now  through  a  copse 

Of  beech,  that  rear  their  smooth  and  stately  trunks, 

Admit  it  partially,  and  half  exclude 

And  half  reveal  its  graces :  in  this  path 

How  long  soe'er  the  wanderer  roves,  each  step 

Shall  wake  fresh  beauties ;  each  short  point  present 

A  different  picture,  new,  and  yet  the  same. 

Book  I. 

The  whole  long  poem  is  a  detailed  picture  of 
an  ideal  paradise  constructed  on  Brown's  principles, 
pompous  and  monotonous  in  style  and  in  versification, 
even  intolerably  so,  but  producing  with  curious  fidelity 


196  POETS'  COUNTRY 

something  of  the  same  effect  on  the  imagination  as  his 
laboured  artifices  for  the  "improvement"  of  Nature 
produce  on  the  eye.  With  what  provoked  Mason  to 
write  the  poem,  which  appeared  at  intervals  between 
1772  and  1782,  and  the  satire  An  Heroic  Epistle  to 
Sir  William  Chambers,  which  appeared  just  after  the 
publication  of  the  first  Book,  we  can  sympathise. 
Chambers,  in  a  Dissertation  published  in  1772,  had 
observed  that  "  Nature  affords  us  but  few  materials  to 
work  with.  Plants,  grounds,  and  water  are  her  only 
productions ;  and  though  both  the  forms  and  arrange- 
ments of  these  may  be  varied  to  an  incredible  degree, 
yet  they  have  but  few  striking  varieties,  the  rest  being 
of  the  nature  of  changes  rung  upon  bells,  which,  though 
in  reality  different,  still  produce  the  same  uniform  kind 
of  jingling,  the  variation  being  too  minute  to  be  easily 
perceived."  Art,  consequently,  must  supply  the  scanti- 
ness of  Nature.  And  this  scantiness  he  proposed  to 
supply  by  introducing  the  barbarous  fantasticalities  of 
the  Chinese  style. 

Mason  is  a  voluminous  and  accomplished  poet,  but 
stilted  and  conventional,  and,  though  he  invoked  sim- 
plicity, was  pompously  artificial.  That  Gray,  who  was 
his  friend,  should  have  overrated  him  is  natural,  but 
that  he  should  have  pronounced  two  lines  in  one  of 
his  friend's  odes  : — 

While  through  the  West,  where  sinks  the  crimson  day, 
Meek  Twilight  slowly  sails,  and  waves  her  banners  grey — 

superb,  is  not  easily  explained. 


THE   WARTONS  197 

Few  men  contributed  more  to  the  Romantic  Revival 
than  the  brothers  Joseph  and  Thomas  Warton.  Joseph 
was  born  in  1722,  received  his  early  education  at 
Winchester,  where  Collins  was  one  of  his  schoolfellows, 
matriculated  from  Oriel  College,  Oxford,  and,  taking 
his  degree  in  1744,  was  not  long  afterwards  ordained. 
In  1766  he  became  headmaster  of  Winchester  School, 
over  which  he  presided  with  much  celebrity  till  1793, 
when  he  retired  to  his  living  at  Wickham,  where  he 
died  in  1800.  His  Essay  on  Pope,  the  first  volume  of 
which  appeared  in  1757,  may  be  said  to  mark  the  re- 
action against  the  Augustan  School  of  English  poetry, 
its  object  being  to  vindicate  the  superiority  of  our  older 
poets  to  those  of  the  Classical  School,  and  to  that  re- 
action, passing  as  the  work  did  through  several  editions, 
it  undoubtedly  contributed.  What  he  inculcated  in 
his  writings  he  enforced  as  a  schoolmaster,  and  among 
his  pupils  was  Bowles,  whose  Sonnets  were  many  years 
later  so  powerfully  to  affect  Coleridge.  As  a  poet — and 
his  earliest  poem,  The  Enthusiast,  or  the  Lover  of  Nature, 
is  dated  1740 — he  also  contributed  to  the  same  move- 
ment. The  Enthusiast  is  an  imitation  of  Thomson, 
and  one  of  the  most  pleasing  of  his  Nature -poems. 
The  Ode  to  Fancy  is  more  or  less  an  imitation  of 
Milton's  L?  Allegro  and  //  Penseroso.  His  Ode  to 
Content  furnished  Collins  with  the  model  for  the 
Ode  to  Evening.  The  most  pleasing  passage  in  his 
poems  is  perhaps  the  following  from  the  Ode  to 
Fancy : — 


198  POETS'  COUNTRY 

O  lover  of  the  desert,  hail ! 

Say  in  what  deep  and  pathless  vale, 

Or  on  what  hoary  mountain's  side, 

'Midst  falls  of  water,  you  reside  ; 

'Mid  broken  rocks  a  rugged  scene, 

With  green  and  grassy  dales  between ; 

'Mid  forests  dark  of  aged  oak, 

Ne'er  echoing  with  the  woodman's  stroke, 

Where  Nature  seemed  to  sit  alone, 

Majestic  on  a  craggy  throne. 

This,  though  commonplace,  is  at  least  pretty. 

Much  more  celebrated  and  influential  was  his 
brother  Thomas,  born  six  years  later.  The  greater 
part  of  his  life  was  spent  at  Oxford — as  commoner, 
scholar,  and  Fellow  of  Trinity  College — for  he  matricu- 
lated from  that  college  in  his  seventeenth  year,  and, 
after  residing  there  for  seven-and-forty  years,  received 
his  death -summons,  a  stroke  of  paralysis,  in  the 
Common  Room,  dying  the  next  day.  He  held  several 
distinguished  posts.  Between  1757  and  1767  he  was 
Professor  of  Poetry ;  in  1785  Camden  Professor  of 
History ;  and  in  the  same  year  succeeded  Cibber  as 
Poet  Laureate.  His  History  of  English  Poetry  is  still 
a  classical  work.  His  edition  of  Theocritus  and  his 
Latin  poems,  and  his  edition  of  Milton's  Minor  Poems, 
are  also  proofs  of  his  accomplishments  as  a  scholar  and 
a  critic.  Like  Gray,  with  whose  career  his  own  was 
singularly  analogous,  he  was  also  a  humorist ;  and  like 
Gray  a  poet,  but  of  a  very  inferior  order.  The  interest 
of  Warton  is,  like  that  of  his  brother,  almost  entirely 
historical,  but  in  that  respect  he  is  really  important, 


WINCHESTER 

Collins,  Philips,  and  War  ton  were  educated  at  Win- 
chester School.  In  this  view  of  Winchester  the  school 
stands  in  the  mid  distance,  the  cathedral  beyond,  and  the 
site  of  Alfred  the  Great's  Palace  on  this  side  of  it. 

The  city  of  Winchester  was  the  first  capital  of  England, 
and  there  was  held  the  first  Parliament. 


THE    WARTONS  199 

for  he  contributed  much  to  the  Romantic  movement, 
in  his  Crusade,  and  more  particularly  in  his  Grave  of 
King  Arthur,  he  anticipated  Sir  Walter  Scott,  the 
last  poem  being  almost  indistinguishable  from  Scott's 
best  narrative.  His  Sonnets  anticipate  Bowles,  and 
that  on  the  River  Lodon  Wordsworth.  The  poem 
of  The  Suicide,  a  most  powerful  poem,  had  the  end 
sustained  the  beginning,  has  quite  the  modern  note, 
particularly  in  the  suffusion  of  the  scenery  with  senti- 
ment. But  his  descriptive  poetry,  best  illustrated  in 
The  Hamlet,  written  in  Wychwood  Forest,  in  the 
Poem  sent  to  a  Friend  on  his  leaving  a  Favourite 
Village  in  Hampshire,  and  the  Approach  of  Summer, 
though  very  pleasing,  just  stop  short  of  distinction, 
and  are  imitative.  He  has  never  the  touch  of  magic, 
never  the  touch  which  redeems  from  commonplace. 

There  is,  however,  something  of  Gainsborough  in 
the  following  from  the  lines  written  in  Wychwood 
Forest.  He  is  speaking  of  the  rustics  round  : — 

When  morning's  twilight-tinctur'd  beam 
Strikes  their  low  thatch  with  slanting  gleam, 
They  rove  abroad  in  ether  blue, 
To  dip  the  scythe  in  fragrant  dew ; 
The  sheaf  to  bind,  the  beech  to  fell, 
That  nodding  shades  a  craggy  dell. 
'Midst  gloomy  glades,  in  warbles  clear, 
Wild  Nature's  sweetest  notes  they  hear : 
On  green  untrodden  banks  they  view 
The  hyacinth's  neglected  hue  : 
In  their  lone  haunts,  and  woodland  rounds, 
They  spy  the  squirrel's  airy  bounds  ; 


200  POETS'  COUNTRY 

And  startle  from  her  ashen  spray, 
Across  the  glen  the  screaming  jay  ; 
Each  native  charm  their  steps  explore 
Of  Solitude's  sequester'd  store. 

Their  little  sons,  who  spread  the  bloom 
Of  health  around  the  clay-built  room, 
Or  through  the  primrose  coppice  stray, 
Or  gambol  in  the  new-mown  hay ; 
Or  quaintly  braid  the  cowslip  twine, 
Or  drive  afield  the  tardy  kine ; 
Or  hasten  from  the  sultry  hill, 
To  loiter  at  the  shady  rill ; 
Or  climb  the  tall  pine's  gloomy  crest, 
To  rob  the  raven's  ancient  nest. 

One  would  have  been  glad  to  find  in  Warton  what 
Oxford  had  to  wait  for  more  than  a  century  to  find, 
a  worthy  laureate  of  her  beauties ;  but  the  utmost  that 
poor  Warton  could  do  for  her  is  seen  in  the  following 
lines  from  his  Isis  : — 

Ye  fretted  pinnacles,  ye  fanes  sublime, 

Ye  towers  that  wear  the  mossy  vest  of  time ; 

Ye  massy  piles  of  old  munificence, 

At  once  the  pride  of  learning  and  defence  ; 

Ye  cloisters  pale,  that,  lengthening  to  the  sight, 

To  contemplation,  step  by  step,  invite  ; 

Ye  high -arch' d  walks,  where  oft  the  whisper  clear 

Of  harps  unseen  have  swept  the  poet's  ear ; 

Ye  temples  dim,  where  pious  duty  pays 

Her  holy  hymns  of  ever-echoing  praise  ; 

Lo !  your  loved  Isis,  from  the  bordering  vale, 

With  all  a  mother's  fondness  bids  you  hail ! 

Most  of  Warton's  ambitious  poems,  with  their 
archaisms,  quaintness,  and  centos  from  the  old  poets, 


THE   WARTONS  201 

too  often  justify,  it  must  be  owned,  Johnson's  well- 
known  sarcastic  epigram  upon  them  : — 

Where'er  I  turn  my  view, 
All  is  strange  yet  nothing  new : 
Endless  labour  all  along, 
Endless  labour  to  be  wrong, 
Phrase  that  Time  hath  flung  away, 
Uncouth  words  in  disarray, 
Tricked  in  antique  ruff  and  bonnet 
Ode  and  elegy  and  sonnet. 

Still  more  historical  importance  than  belongs  to  the 
poetry  of  the  Wartons  must  be  assigned  to  Beattie's 
Minstrel,  the  extraordinary  popularity  of  which  during 
the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century  shows  how 
much  the  public  taste  had  reacted  in  favour  of  a  return 
to  Nature.  Beattie's  poem  was  suggested,  as  he 
himself  says,  by  that  epoch-making  work,  Percy's 
Reliques  of  Ancient  English  Poetry.  Its  purpose  was  to 
trace  the  progress  of  a  poet  moulded  by  communion 
with  Nature.  The  poet  is  a  Scotch  shepherd,  his 
surroundings  the  scenery  characteristic  of  those  parts 
of  Scotland  afterwards  celebrated  by  Scott.  But 
Beattie  never  describes  in  detail,  his  pictures  are 
general.  He  has  true  enthusiasm  for  Nature.  There 
is  no  mistaking  the  accent  of  such  a  stanza  as  this  : — 

O  how  canst  thou  renounce  the  boundless  store 
Of  charms  which  Nature  to  her  votary  yields  ! 
The  warbling  woodland,  the  resounding  shore, 
The  pomp  of  groves,  and  garniture  of  fields  ; 


202  POETS'  COUNTRY 

All  that  the  genial  ray  of  morning  gilds, 

And  all  that  echoes  to  the  song  of  even, 

All  that  the  mountain's  sheltering  bosom  shields, 

And  all  the  dread  magnificence  of  heaven, 

O  how  canst  thou  renounce,  and  hope  to  be  forgiven ! 

His  tone  and  touch  are  often,  it  is  true,  con- 
ventional, but  occasionally  he  has  real  charm,  as  in  : — 

When  o'er  the  sky  advanced  the  kindling  dawn, 
The  crimson  cloud,  blue  main,  and  mountain  grey, 
And  lake,  dim-gleaming  on  the  smoky  lawn. 

The  following,  too,  is  both  picturesque  and 
powerful : — 

Oft  when  the  winter  storm  had  ceased  to  rave, 
He  roamed  the  snowy  waste  at  even,  to  view 
The  cloud  stupendous,  from  th'  Atlantic  wave 
High-towering,  sail  along  th'  horizon  blue  ; 
Where,  'midst  the  changeful  scenery,  ever  new, 
Fancy  a  thousand  wondrous  forms  descries, 
More  wildly  great  than  ever  pencil  drew ; 
Rocks,  torrents,  gulfs,  and  shapes  of  giant  size, 
And  glitt'ring  cliffs  on  cliffs,  and  fiery  ramparts  rise. 

Beattie  anticipates,  if  very  faintly,  Byron  on  one  side 
and  Wordsworth  on  the  other.  It  would  be  scarcely  too 
much  to  say  that  the  first  two  cantos  of  Ckilde  Harold  are 
not  only  more  or  less  modelled  on  The  Minstrel,  Harold 
being  Edwin  Byronised,  but  it  recalls  it  in  many  details, 
the  most  striking,  perhaps,  being  the  concluding  stanzas 
of  the  second  canto,  which,  though  founded  on  fact, 
have  a  very  striking  resemblance  to  those  concluding 
the  second  canto  of  Beattie's  poem.  In  Beattie's 


BEATTIE  203 

"lone  enthusiast"  we  have  more  than  the  adumbration 
of  Wordsworth's  ideal  poet,  that  poet  in  whose  educa- 
tion Nature  is  the  central  informing  power,  who  in  her 
finds  inspiration  and  wisdom,  and  who  in  her  light  reads 
man  and  life.  He  is  fully  entitled  to  the  praise  of  an 
initiator,  and  this  is  his  highest  praise.  Regarded 
independently  and  in  relation  to  its  purely  intrinsic 
merit,  his  poetry  is  scarcely  likely  to  find  readers  now. 
He  is  one  of  those  minor  lights  which,  like  so  many 
others,  have  disappeared  in  the  effulgence  of  the 
luminaries  who  succeeded  them. 


AMONG  the  most  pleasing  of  the  minor  Nature  poets 
of  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  Dr. 
John  Langhorne,  who  is  now,  perhaps,  better  known 
popularly  as  co-translator  with  his  brother  of  Plutarch's 
Lives.  He  belonged  to,  if  indeed  he  was  not  the 
founder  of,  what  may  be  called  the  Sentimental  School. 
He  struck  many  of  the  notes  which  were  afterwards 
sounded  more  powerfully  by  Wordsworth.  His  most 
elaborate  purely  descriptive  poem  is  Studley  Park,  and 
he  was  also  the  laureate  of  the  River  Eden  and  the 
Valley  of  Irwan.  The  first  in  heroic  couplets  is  in  the 
conventional  style ;  six  lines  are,  perhaps,  worth 

quoting : — 

Fancy  bends  her  eye, 

Longs  o'er  the  cliffs  and  deep'ning  lawns  to  fly. 
Enchanted  sees  each  silv'ry-floating  wave 
Beat  thy  green  banks,  thy  lonely  vallies  lave : 
And  now  delighted,  now  she  joys  to  hear 
Thy  deep,  slow  falls,  long-lab'ring  through  her  ear. 

But  it  is  in  his  insistence  that  in  Nature  and  in 

204 


LANGHORNE  205 

Nature  only  that  man's  moral  salvation  lies  that  he 
is  chiefly  interesting.  Thus  in  a  poem  entitled  an 
Inscription  on  the  Door  of  a  Study  he  writes  : — 

Has  fair  Philosophy  thy  love  ? 
Away  !  she  lives  in  yonder  grove. 
If  the  sweet  Muse  thy  pleasure  gives ; — 
With  her  in  yonder  grove  she  lives : 
And  if  Religion  claims  thy  care ; 
Religion,  fled  from  books,  is  there 
For  first  from  Nature's  works  we  drew 
Our  knowledge,  and  our  virtue  too. 

In  his  Fables  of  Flora  he  anticipates  Wordsworth 
by  enlisting  Nature  in  the  service  of  moral  teaching, 
and  when  Wordsworth  wrote 

One  impulse  from  a  vernal  wood 
May  teach  you  more  of  man, 
Of  moral  evil  and  of  good, 
Than  all  the  sages  can, 

he  simply  repeated  what  Langhorne  had  preached  nearly 
forty  years  before  him.  Thus  in  his  tenth  fable  Lang- 
horne writes,  in  reference  to  Nature's  phenomena  : — 

Whatever  charms  the  ear  or  eye, 

All  beauty  and  all  harmony  ; 

If  sweet  sensations  these  produce, 

I  know  they  have  their  moral  use ; 

I  know  that  Nature's  charms  can  move 

The  springs  that  strike  to  virtue's  love. 

Nor  is  this  all.  Like  Wordsworth,  he  insists,  and 
it  is  the  main  burden  of  his  poems,  that  the  true  ends 


206  POETS'  COUNTRY 

of  life  are  peace  and  joy,  which  can  be  found  in 
Nature  alone,  for  in  Nature  God  reveals  Himself  and 
speaks. 

Langhorne  was  a  weak  man  and  not  master  of 
himself,  but  he  had  real  genius,  and  sometimes  surprises 
us  with  his  flashes  of  unexpected  power.  As  when, 
speaking  of  a  ruin,  he  says, 

Where  longs  to  fall  that  rifted  spire, 
As  weary  of  th'  insulting  air, 

which  is  surely  a  fine  imaginative  touch. 

Genius  most  certainly  cannot  be  claimed  for  Richard 
Jago.  A  schoolfellow  and  friend  of  Shenstone,  he 
became  a  servitor  of  University  College,  Oxford,  in 
which  University  he  took  his  Master's  degree  in  1738. 
He  subsequently  took  orders  and  became  vicar  of 
Snitterfield  in  Warwickshire,  where  in  1767  he  pro- 
duced his  only  poem  of  any  importance,  Edge  Hill.  On 
a  work  so  essentially  mediocre  it  would  be  absurd  to 
enlarge,  but  in  any  account  of  descriptive  poetry  it 
must  find  a  place,  for  it  is  the  most  elaborate  local 
poem  in  our  language. 

The  poet  takes  his  stand  on  Edge  Hill,  and  the  view 
from  the  eminence,  however  tamely  described,  is  at 
least  accurate  and  not  without  vividness  : — 

The  summit's  gain'd !  and,  from  its  airy  height, 
The  late-trod  plain  looks  like  an  inland  sea, 
View'd  from  some  promontory's  hoary  head, 
With  distant  shores  environ'd ;  nor  with  face 


JAGO  207 

Glassy  and  uniform,  but  when  its  waves 
Are  gently  ruffled  by  the  southern  gale, 
And  the  tall  masts  like  waving  forests  rise. 

Such  is  the  scene !  that,  from  the  terrac'd  hill, 
Displays  its  graces ;  intermixture  sweet 
Of  lawns  and  groves,  of  open  and  retir'd. 
Vales,  farms,  towns,  villas,  castles,  distant  spires, 
And  hills  on  hills,  with  ambient  clouds  enrob'd, 
In  long  succession  court  the  lab'ring  sight, 
Lost  in  the  bright  confusion. 

He  then  in  the  course  of  his  four  Books  surveys  in 
detail  all  that  can  be  discerned,  first  from  the  south- 
west of  the  hill,  which  occupies  the  morning  ;  then  from 
Ratley  Hill  in  the  centre,  which  occupies  the  noon  and 
afternoon  ;  then  from  the  north-east,  which  occupies  the 
evening ;  intermingling  his  descriptions  with  legendary, 
historical,  and  antiquarian  particulars.  Warwick  is 
surveyed  ;  Coventry,  in  connection  with  which  the  story 
of  Godiva  is  told,  not  exactly  in  the  style  of  Tennyson  ; 
Kenilworth,  with  its  ancient  glories, 

Vanished  like  the  fleeting  forms 
Drawn  in  an  evening  cloud  ; 

Solihull,  Birmingham,  the  Dasset  Hills,  Farnborough, 
Wormleighton,  Shuckburgh,  Leame,  and  other  places, 
the  poem  concluding  with  an  account  of  the  great  event 
of  which  the  hill  was  the  scene,  with  appropriate  reflec- 
tions. Jago,  probably  with  a  view  to  preferment,  is 
careful  to  introduce  flattering  descriptions  of  all  the 
great  houses  and  seats  of  important  people  which  come 
within  his  survey.  The  poem  is  really  interesting,  and 


208  POETS'  COUNTRY 

with  the  scene  before  us  it  is  impossible  not  to  admire 
the  ingenuity  and  scrupulous  thoroughness  with  which 
the  author — we  wish  we  could  call  him  the  poet — has 
performed  his  task. 

What  Jago  aspired  to  do  for  Warwickshire,  John 
Scott  aspired  to  do  for  a  more  limited  sphere.  Scott, 
whose  name  will  be  familiar  to  readers  of  Boswell's  Life 
of  Johnson,  was  a  Quaker,  the  son  of  a  maltster  who 
had  settled,  in  1740,  at  Am  well  in  Hertfordshire,  a 
favourite  haunt,  it  will  be  remembered,  of  old  Isaac 
Walton,  the  scene  of  his  Anglers'  Dialogue  being  the 
neighbouring  vale  of  Lee,  between  Tottenham  and 
Ware.  In  Scott's  time — his  poem  appeared  in  1776 — 
Amwell  was  one  of  the  prettiest  hamlets  in  England, 
and  the  surrounding  country,  particularly  the  road 
leading  from  Langley-bottom  to  Widbury  Hill,  truly 
lovely  and  picturesque.  Not  much  can  be  said  for  the 
poetical  quality  of  Scott's  poem,  which  is  not  in- 
frequently at  once  pompous  and  prosaic,  but  it  is 
vividly  realistic.  Thus  of  Langley-bottom  he  writes  in 
verse  which,  anticipating,  would  not  have  disgraced 
Cowper : — 

Elysian  scene ! 

At  ev'ning  often,  while  the  setting  sun 
On  the  green  summit  of  thy  Eastern  groves 
Pour'd  full  his  yellow  radiance ;  while  the  voice 
Of  Zephyr  whispering  'midst  the  rustling  leaves, 
The  sound  of  water  murmuring  through  the  sedge, 
The  turtle's  plaintive  call,  and  music  soft 
Of  distant  bells,  whose  ever  varying  notes 
In  slow  sad  measure  mov'd. 


SCOTT  209 

And  here  is  his  picture  of  the  scene  from  Amwell, 
as  we  view  it  from  below  the  neighbourhood  of  the 
church.  We  smile  at  his  prosaic  "how  picturesque," 
but  we  must  remember  that  the  word  when  he  wrote 
had  not  the  banale  association  it  has  now,  but  was  new 
to  our  language. 

How  picturesque  the  view !  where  up  the  side 
Of  that  steep  bank,  her  roofs  of  russet  thatch 
Rise  mix'd  with  trees,  above  whose  swelling  tops 
Ascends  the  tall  church  tow'r,  and  loftier  still 
The  hill's  extended  ridge.     How  picturesque  ! 
Where  slow  beneath  that  bank  the  silver  stream 
Glides  by  the  flowering  isle,  and  willow  groves 
Wave  on  its  northern  verge.  .  .  .  How  picturesque 
The  slender  group  of  airy  elm,  the  clump 
Of  pollard  oak,  or  ash,  with  ivy  brown 
Entwin'd  ;  the  walnut's  gloomy  breadth  of  boughs, 
The  orchard's  ancient  fence  of  rugged  pales, 
The  haystack's  dusky  cone,  the  moss-grown  shed, 
The  clay-built  barn ;  the  elder-shaded  cot, 
Whose  white-wash'd  gable  prominent  through  green 
Of  waving  branches,  shows  .  .  . 

.  .  .  The  wall  with  mantling  vines 

O'erspread,  the  porch  with  climbing  woodbine  wreath'd, 
And  under  sheltering  eves  the  sunny  bench 
Where  brown  hives  range. 

This  is  an  excellent  illustration  of  the  Nature-painting 
characteristic  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when  this  poetry 
became  elaborated :  not  a  touch  of  imagination,  not  a 
touch  of  fancy,  and  without  any  appeal  to  either  ;  body 
without  soul,  accident  without  essence. 

Nor  was  Amwell  the  only  contribution  of  Scott  to 
descriptive  poetry.  In  the  preface  to  his  Amcebcean 


210  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Eclogues  he  observed  that  "  much  of  the  rural  imagery 
which  our  country  affords  has  already  been  introduced 
in  poetry,  but  many  obvious  and  pleasing  appearances 
seem  to  have  totally  escaped  notice."  This  he  aspired 
to  supply,  and  he  supplied  it  by  minutely  discriminated 
descriptions  of  flowers,  herbs,  trees,  and  the  common 
objects  of  the  country,  managed  principally  by  epithets, 
thus  anticipating  Crabbe,  though  he  has  nothing  of 
Crabbe's  felicity.  His  descriptions  are  rendered  ludi- 
crous by  the  form  he  employs — amcebsean  delineations 
of  natural  objects  being  surely  more  ridiculous  than 
burlesque. 

Far  superior  to  Scott  and  Jago  was  Charlotte 
Smith,  whose  Elegiac  Sonnets  and  Other  Poems  ran 
through  many  editions,  and  had  indeed  extraordinary 
popularity  between  1784  and  1797.  They  were  highly 
praised  by  Miss  Mitford,  a  very  competent  judge,  who 
told  Mrs.  Browning  that  she  never  took  a  spring  walk 
without  feeling  Charlotte  Smith's  love  of  Nature  and 
power  of  describing  it,  and  who  observed  in  one  of  her 
letters  that  this  poetess  had,  "with  all  her  faults,  the 
eye  and  the  mind  of  a  landscape  poet."  At  such  praise 
a  modern  reader  would  smile,  for  it  may  be  doubted 
whether  any  more  favourable  illustrations  of  Mrs. 
Smith's  merits  could  be  found  than  the  following  : — 

Again  the  wood  and  long-withdrawing  vale 
In  many  a  tint  of  tender  green  are  drest, 

Where  the  young  leaves,  unfolding,  scarce  conceal 
Beneath  their  early  shade,  the  half-form'd  nest 


CHARLOTTE   SMITH  211 

Of  finch  and  woodlark  ;  and  the  primrose  pale, 

And  lavish  cowslip,  wildly  scatter'd  round, 
Give  their  sweet  spirits  to  the  sighing  gale. 

Sonnet  VIII. 

Clouds,  gold  and  purple,  o'er  the  western  ray 

Threw  a  bright  veil,  and  catching  lights  between, 
Fell  on  the  glancing  sail,  that  we  had  seen 

With  soft,  but  adverse  winds,  throughout  the  day 

Contending  vainly. 

Sonnet  LXIX. 

While  Charlotte  Smith  was  in  the  full  tide  of  her 
modest  popularity,  a  small  volume  of  Sonnets,  some- 
thing in  the  style  of  her  own,  though  in  merit  differing 
not  merely  in  degree  but  in  kind,  stole  into  the  world. 
This  was  entitled  Fourteen  Sonnets  written  chiefly  on 
Picturesque  Spots  during  a  Journey,  and  it  was 
published  in  Bath  in  1789.  The  author  of  the  volume 
was  William  Lisle  Bowles,  who  had  been  a  pupil  of 
Joseph  Warton  at  Winchester  and  of  Thomas  Warton 
at  Trinity  College,  Oxford.  These  sonnets,  whose 
influence  on  Coleridge  is  well  known,  as  he  has  both  in 
prose  and  verse  expressed  his  indebtedness  to  them 
both  in  the  way  of  stimulus  and  inspiration,  may  be 
said  to  mark  an  era  in  the  development  of  the  Romantic 
School.  Bowles  is  undoubtedly  as  much  a  pupil  of  the 
Wartons  in  poetry  as  he  was  a  scholar,  but  he  had 
more  simplicity,  sensibility,  refinement,  and  charm. 
The  little  volume  became  exceedingly  popular,  and  to 
these  Sonnets  others  were  added  in  the  same  style. 

Perhaps  the  most  typical  of  those  would  be  the  first, 
and  that  I  will  transcribe  : — 


212  POETS'  COUNTRY 

AT   TYNEMOUTH   PRIORY 

AFTER    A    TEMPESTUOUS    VOYAGE 

As  slow  I  climb  the  cliff's  ascending  side, 
Much  musing  on  the  track  of  terror  past, 
When  o'er  the  dark  wave  rode  the  howling  blast, 
Pleased  I  look  back,  and  view  the  tranquil  tide 
That  laves  the  pebbled  shore  :  and  now  the  beam 
Of  evening  smiles  on  the  grey  battlement, 
And  yon  forsaken  tower  that  time  has  rent : — 
The  lifted  oar  far  off  with  transient  gleam 
Is  touched,  and  hushed  is  all  the  billowy  deep ! 

Soothed  by  the  scene,  thus  on  tired  Nature's  breast 
A  stillness  slowly  steals,  and  kindred  rest ; 
While  sea-sounds  lull  her,  as  she  sinks  to  sleep, 
Like  melodies  that  mourn  upon  the  lyre, 
Waked  by  the  breeze,  and,  as  they  mourn,  expire  !     • 

In  a  similar  strain  are  the  Sonnets  on  Bamburgh 
Castle,  the  River  Wainsbeck,  the  River  Itchin,  the 
Tweed,  Clydesdale,  Dover  Cliffs,  the  Cher  well,  Netley 
Abbey,  and  Malvern  ;  little  cameos  penetrated  with 
pensive  sentiment.  His  more  elaborate  descriptive 
poems,  such  as  Ban-well  Hill,  were  written  many  years 
later,  and  belong  to  the  next  century.  On  the  whole, 
an  important  and  distinguished  place  must  be  assigned 
to  Bowles  in  the  history  of  descriptive  poetry.  In  his 
Sonnets  culminated  what  had  found  successive  expres- 
sion in  Langhorne,  in  the  Wartons,  and  in  Charlotte 
Smith,  and  thus  he  is  the  connecting-link  between  the 
descriptive  poetry  of  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth 
centuries. 

In  1788  Jago  had  a  disciple,  but  a  disciple  very 


CROWE  213 

superior  to  his  master,  in  William  Crowe,  who  did  for 
Lewesdon  Hill  what  Jago  had  done  for  Edge  Hill. 
Crowe  was  Public  Orator  at  Oxford  and  rector  of 
Alton  Barnes  in  Wiltshire,  which  in  1787  he  had 
exchanged  for  that  of  Stoke  Alias  in  Dorsetshire,  not 
far  from  the  scene  of  his  poem. 

Lewesdon  Hill  is  in  the  western  part  of  Dorsetshire, 
and  commands  an  extensive  prospect  over  the  neigh- 
bouring country.  The  poet  represents  himself  as 
standing  on  the  top  of  the  hill  on  a  May  morning,  his 
theme  being  the  prospect  before  him  : — 

How  changed  is  thy  appearance,  beauteous  hill, 
Thou  hast  put  off  thy  wintry  garb,  brown  heath 
And  russet  fern,  thy  seemly-colour 'd  cloak, 
To  hide  the  hoary  frosts  and  dropping  rains 
Of  chill  December,  and  art  gaily  robed 
In  livery  of  the  Spring  :  upon  thy  brow 
A  cap  of  flowery  hawthorn,  and  thy  neck 
Mantled  with  new-sprung  furze  and  spangles  thick 
Of  golden  broom :  nor  lack  thee  tufted  woods 
Adown  thy  sides  :  tall  oaks  of  lusty  green, 
The  darker  fir,  light  ash,  and  the  fresh  tops 
Of  the  young  hazel  join  to  form  thy  skirts 
In  many  a  waving  fold  of  verdant  wreath. 

From  this  proud  eminence  on  all  sides  round 

Th'  unbroken  prospect  opens  to  my  view ; 

On  all  sides  large,  save  only  when  the  head 

Of  Pillesdon  rises,  Pillesdon's  lofty  pen 

Which,  like  a  rampire,  bounds  the  vale  beneath. 

There  woods,  there  blooming  orchards,  there  are  seen 

Herds  ranging,  or  at  rest  beneath  the  shade 

Of  some  wide-branching  oak  :  there  goodly  fields 

Of  corn  and  verdant  pasture,  whence  the  kine 


214  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Returning  with  their  milky  treasure  home, 
Store  the  rich  dairy. 

See  how  the  sun,  here  clouded,  afar  off 
Pours  down  the  golden  radiance  of  his  light 
Upon  the  enridged  sea,  where  the  black  ship 
Sails  on  the  phosphor-seeming  waves. 

Such  are  favourable  extracts  from  a  poem  which 
Wordsworth  pronounced  to  be  excellent,  which  Rogers 
said  was  full  of  noble  passages,  and  which  with  Paradise 
Lost  he  studied  as  a  model  for  his  Italy.  It  is  easy  to 
see  that  Crowe  had  a  more  artistic  eye  and  much  better 
ear  than  Jago,  but  would  any  modern  critic  go  further 
in  praise  of  him  ? 

Contemporary  with  Crowe  was  another  Oxford 
dignitary  who,  in  1793,  was  Professor  of  Poetry  in 
that  University — James  Hurdis.  Hurdis,  a  somewhat 
voluminous  poet,  author  of  The  Village  Curate,  The 
Favourite  Village,  and  other  poems,  is  a  mild  and 
colourless  imitator  of  Cowper,  holding  pretty  much 
the  same  place  among  descriptive  poets  as  his  friend 
Hayley  holds  among  didactic. 

This  was  the  state  of  descriptive  poetry  of  the 
average  and  popular  order  when  the  eighteenth  century 
passed  into  the  nineteenth. 


WILLIAM   COWPER 

OLNEY  AND  WESTON 

WITH  the  possible  exception  of  Tennyson,  no  eminent 
English  poet  is  so  intimately  associated  with  the  scenes 
amidst  which  he  lived  as  Cowper.  The  greater  part, 
indeed  almost  the  whole,  of  Cowper's  descriptive  poetry 
is  little  less  than  a  series  of  photographs  of  what  sur- 
rounded him  at  Olney  and  Weston.  Nothing  can  be 
more  delightful  than  to  wander  over  these  scenes  with 
his  poems  in  our  hands,  for  they  are  a  very  mirror  of 
what  we  see.  Probably  no  places  in  England  have  so 
little  changed  since  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  when  the  prince  of  landscape-gardeners, 
Lancelot  Brown,  commonly  known  by  the  nickname 
coined  from  a  favourite  phrase  of  his,  "Capability 
Brown,"  was  at  the  height  of  his  vogue.  With  his 
handiwork  we  have,  in  dealing  with  Cowper's  de- 
scriptive poetry,  almost  as  much  to  do  as  with 
Nature's. 

A   short  general   account   of  Olney  and  Weston, 
and   of  the  incidents   in   Cowper's   life   so   intimately 

215 


216  POETS'  COUNTRY 

connected   with   them,  is   a   necessary  preliminary  to 
this  sketch. 

It  will  be  remembered  that,  after  his  first  attack 
of  insanity  in  1763,  he  went,  on  his  recovery,  in  the 
summer  of  1765,  into  lodgings  at  Huntingdon,  that  he 
might  be  near  his  brother  John,  who  was  a  Fellow  of 
Bennet  College,  Cambridge.  At  Huntingdon  he  made 
the  acquaintance,  through  their  son,  of  the  Rev.  Morley 
Unwin  and  his  wife,  with  whom  he  became  so  intimate 
that  he  took  up  his  residence  with  them.  In  the 
summer  of  1767  Mr.  Unwin  was  thrown  from  his  horse, 
and  killed.  This,  however,  did  not  separate  Cowper 
from  the  family,  for  between  him  and  Mrs.  Unwin, 
who  was  five  or  six  years  his  senior,  had  sprung  up  the 
closest  affection  ;  he  loving  her  "  as  a  mother,"  she  him 
"as  a  son."  While  still  undecided  where  to  settle, 
the  Rev.  John  Newton,  then  curate  of  Olney,  a  very 
remarkable  and  interesting  man,  who  was  to  become 
with  Cowper  co-author  of  the  famous  Olney  Hymns, 
happened  to  call  on  them.  He  suggested  that  they 
should  take  a  house  near  him,  either  at  Olney  or 
Emberton.  His  advice  was  taken,  and  on  September 
14,  1767,  Cowper  settled  with  the  Unwins  at  a  large 
house,  or  rather  in  the  western  portion  of  it,  for  they 
never  occupied  the  whole,  in  the  market-place  at  Olney, 
called  Orchard  Side,  which  became  their  home  for 
nineteen  years.  The  little  town,  which  is  about 
thirteen  miles  from  Bedford,  is  the  most  northerly  in 
Buckinghamshire.  As  we  enter  it  from  the  railway 


OLNEY 

Cowper's  garden  in  Olney  looks  out  on  orchards.  When 
this  picture  was  painted  they  were  in  full  blossom  and  the 
fields  a  mass  of  buttercups. 

The  spire  is  of  Olney  Church,  and  the  house  the  Vicarage, 
round  which  were  his  favourite  walks. 


COWPER  217 

station,  one  long  broad  street  widening  southward 
into  a  spacious  triangular  market-place  conducts  in 
an  almost  straight  line  to  the  house  now  so  famous. 
Fronting  the  market-place,  a  large,  red-brick  house 
with  stone  dressings,  two  doors  and  five  windows,  it 
is  the  most  conspicuous  object  in  its  neighbourhood 
and  instantly  attracts  the  eye.  It  has,  mainly  owing 
to  the  efforts  of  Mr.  Thomas  Wright,  the  latest  editor 
and  biographer  of  Cowper,  been  most  piously  preserved, 
and  is  now  a  Museum  rich  in  relics  and  mementos  of 
the  poet.  Here  we  are  in  the  very  midst  of  all  that  is 
familiar  to  us  in  his  poems  and  correspondence — the 
little  parlour,  a  square  room  with  two  windows,  referred 
to  in  the  opening  of  the  Fourth  Book  of  The  Task ;  the 
small  casement  at  the  back  through  which  Puss,  Tiny, 
and  Bess  came  leaping  out  to  their  evening  gambols 
on  the  Turkey  carpet ;  his  bedroom  ;  the  summer- 
house  in  the  garden,  at  the  back — "  not  much  bigger 
than  a  sedan-chair" — now,  it  is  true,  separated  by  a 
wall  from  the  poet's  own  garden,  but  absolutely  intact, 
where  he  passed  so  many  sad  and  so  many  happy 
hours.  The  door,  too,  which  was  made  through  the 
vicarage  garden  wall  may  be  still  traced  in  the  brick- 
work ;  and  the  Guinea  Field,  though  no  longer  an 
orchard,  still  retains  its  name.  All  that  has  quite 
disappeared  is  the  greenhouse. 

The  town  of  Olney,  as  Cowper  himself  more  than 
once  ruefully  observed,  has  in  itself  little  beauty ;  but 
this  is  not  the  case  with  Weston,  whither  he  removed 


218  POETS'  COUNTRY 

in  November  1786,  to  occupy  Weston  Lodge,  a  large 
and  comfortable  house  in  the  very  middle  of  the  village, 
where  he  lived  till  July  1795.  Weston  Underwood  is 
only  about  a  mile  and  a  quarter  from  Olney ;  the  only 
difference  it  made  to  him  was  that  instead  of  having  to 
walk  that  distance  to  view  the  scenes  which  he  has  so 
vividly  described,  he  was  in  the  midst  of  them.  He 
has  himself,  in  a  letter  to  his  friend,  Mrs.  Hill,  described 
his  situation  here  : — 

The  opposite  object  to  the  Lodge,  and  the  only  one,  is  an 
orchard,  so  well  planted,  and  with  trees  of  such  growth,  that  we 
seem  to  look  into  a  wood,  or  rather  to  be  surrounded  by  one. 
Thus,  placed  as  we  are  in  the  midst  of  a  village,  we  have  none  of 
those  disagreeables  that  belong  to  such  a  position,  and  the  village 
itself  is  one  of  the  prettiest  I  know :  terminated  at  one  end  by 
the  church  tower,  seen  through  the  trees,  and  at  the  other  by  a 
very  handsome  gateway  opening  into  a  fine  grove  of  elms  belong- 
ing to  our  neighbour  Courtenay. 

The  shrubbery  at  the  back  of  the  house,  of  which 
he  so  often  speaks,  and  which  he  describes  as  being 
"very  generally  admired,  being  a  delightful  labyrinth, 
composed  of  flowering  shrubs  and  adorned  with  gravel 
walks  having  convenient  seats  placed  at  appropriate 
distances,"  has  lately  been  converted  into  an  orchard. 
It  was  here,  while  threading  its  winding  walk,  that  he 
meditated,  as  he  has  himself  told  us,  his  projected  poem 
on  The  Four  Ages,  a  project  unfortunately  never  carried 
out : — 

Thus  while  grey  evening  lull'd  the  wind,  and  call'd 
Fresh  odours  from  the  shrubbery  at  my  side, 
Taking  my  lonely  winding  walk,  I  mused. 


COWPER  219 

At  Weston  he  was  within  almost  a  stone's  throw  of 
the  mansion  of  the  family  to  whom  the  place  owed  so 
much — Weston  Hall,  the  seat  of  the  Throckmortons. 
Weston  Hall  stood  on  the  right  side  of  the  road  leading 
from  Weston  to  Olney,  just  outside  the  village.  It  was 
demolished  twenty-seven  years  after  Cowper's  death,  in 
1827,  all  that  remains  of  it  now  being  only  the  iron 
gates  with  four  stone  piers,  and  a  portion  of  the  stabling 
and  granary  topped  by  a  cupola.  But  the  park  and 
grounds  laid  out  under  the  instructions  of  the  first 
baronet,  Robert  Throckmorton,  by  Lancelot  Brown 
remain  just  as  they  were  in  Cowper's  time.  With  the 
fifth  baronet,  Sir  John  Courtenay  Throckmorton,  who 
died  in  1819,  Cowper,  who  became  acquainted  with 
him  in  1784,  was  on  very  friendly  terms,  as  his  corre- 
spondence and  several  of  his  poems  show. 

One  of  the  advantages  he  had  at  Weston  was  that 
he  was  within  a  few  hundred  yards  of  the  grounds 
which  at  Olney  were  more  than  a  mile  from  him.  To 
them  he  had  access  here  through  a  door  in  the  boundary 
wall,  letting  himself  in  from  the  road  by  a  private  key. 

Let  us  now  accompany  him  step  by  step — for  we 
can  do  so  with  ease — through  the  scenes  which  he  has 
painted  so  vividly  for  all  time.  Leaving  Orchard  Side 
and  proceeding  along  the  Weston  road  for  about  a 
quarter  of  a  mile,  we  turn  into  a  field  on  the  right- 
hand  side.  This  brings  us  into  what  is  known  as  The 
Pightle.  Crossing  this,  we  make  our  way  along  a 
grass -grown,  rutty  cart-road  up  a  gently -ascending 


220  POETS'  COUNTRY 

eminence,  three  or  four  hundred  yards  bringing  us  very 
gradually  to  the  highest  point  We  now  have  before 
us  what  is  photographed  in  the  First  Book  of  The  Task 
(134-179).  It  was  here,  on  this  eminence,  that  Cowper, 
with  Mrs.  Unwin  on  his  arm,  delighted  to  pause : — 

How  oft  upon  yon  eminence  our  pace 

Has  slacken'd  to  a  pause,  and  we  have  borne 

The  ruffling  wind,  scarce  conscious  that  it  blew, 

While  Admiration,  feeding  at  the  eye, 

And  still  unsated,  dwelt  upon  the  scene. 

Thence  with  what  pleasure  have  we  just  discern'd 

The  distant  plough  slow  moving,  and  beside 

His  labouring  team,  that  swerv'd  not  from  the  track, 

The  sturdy  swain  diminished  to  a  boy ! 

Here  Ouse,  slow  winding  through  a  level  plain 

Of  spacious  meads  with  cattle  sprinkl'd  o'er, 

Conducts  the  eye  along  his  sinuous  course 

Delighted.     There,  fast  rooted  in  their  bank, 

Stand,  never  overlook'd,  our  favourite  elms, 

That  screen  the  herdsman's  solitary  hut ; 

While  far  beyond,  and  overthwart  the  stream, 

That,  as  with  molten  glass,  inlays  the  vale, 

The  sloping  land  recedes  into  the  clouds ; 

Displaying  on  its  varied  side,  the  grace 

Of  hedge-row  beauties  numberless,  square  tower,1 

Tall  spire,2  from  which  the  sound  of  cheerful  bells 

Just  undulates  upon  the  listening  ear, 

Groves,  heaths,  and  smoking  villages,  remote. 

Scenes  must  be  beautiful  which,  daily  view'd, 

Please  daily,  and  whose  novelty  survives 

Long  knowledge  and  the  scrutiny  of  years. 

In    the    Sixth    Book    (58-84)   the   same    scene  is 
sketched  in  winter  : — 

1  Cliftou  Reyiies  church  steeple.  2  Olney  steeple. 


COWPER  221 

Now  at  noon 

Upon  the  southern  side  of  the  slant  hills, 
And  where  the  woods  fence  off  the  northern  blast, 
The  season  smiles,  resigning  all  its  rage, 
And  has  the  warmth  of  May.     The  vault  is  blue 
Without  a  cloud,  and  white  without  a  speck 
The  dazzling  splendour  of  the  scene  below. 
Again  the  harmony  comes  o'er  the  vale ; 
And  through  the  trees  I  view  the  embattled  tower, 
Whence  all  the  music.     I  again  perceive 
The  soothing  influence  of  the  wafted  strains, 
And  settle  in  soft  musings  as  I  tread 
The  walk,  still  verdant,  under  oaks  and  elms, 
Whose  outspread  branches  overarch  the  glade. 
The  roof,  though  moveable  through  all  its  length 
As  the  wind  sways  it,  has  yet  well  suffic'd, 
And,  intercepting  in  their  silent  fall 
The  frequent  flakes,  has  kept  a  path  for  me. 
No  noise  is  here,  or  none  that  hinders  thought. 
The  redbreast  warbles  still,  but  is  content 
With  slender  notes,  and  more  than  half  suppressed ; 
Pleased  with  his  solitude,  and  flitting  light 
From  spray  to  spray,  where'er  he  rests  he  shakes 
From  many  a  twig  the  pendent  drops  of  ice, 
That  tinkle  in  the  wither'd  leaves  below. 
Stillness,  accompanied  with  sounds  so  soft, 
Charms  more  than  silence. 

In  the  latter  part  of  this  description  we  can  easily 
see  that  he  had  moved  on  to  the  coppice  or  spinny 
some  quarter  of  a  mile  onward.  To  the  sound  of 
the  Emberton  bells,  which  still  falls  on  our  ear,  as  we 
stand  there,  just  as  it  did  on  Cowper's  more  than  a 
century  ago,  he  refers  again  in  a  beautiful  passage  at 
the  beginning  of  the  Book  (1-12) : — 

There  is  in  souls  a  sympathy  with  sounds, 
And  as  the  mind  is  pitch'd  the  ear  is  pleased 


222  POETS'  COUNTRY 

With  melting  airs  or  martial,  brisk  or  grave ; 
Some  chord  in  unison  with  what  we  hear 
Is  touch'd  within  us,  and  the  heart  replies. 
How  soft  the  music  of  those  village  bells, 
Falling  at  intervals  upon  the  ear 
In  cadence  sweet,  now  dying  all  away, 
Now  pealing  loud  again,  and  louder  still, 
Clear  and  sonorous,  as  the  gale  comes  on ! 
With  easy  force  it  opens  all  the  cells 
Where  Memory  slept. 

Before  passing  on,  we  may  pause  to  note  that  in  the 
valley  meadow  opposite  this  eminence,  and  just  outside 
the  town  where  Goosey  Bridge  spans  the  Ouse,  occurred 
the  incident  commemorated  in  The  Dog  and  the  Water- 
Lily.  One  feature  in  the  landscape  has,  unhappily, 
disappeared : — 

The  bridge 

That  with  its  wearisome  but  needful  length 
Bestrides  the  wintry  flood. 

This,  having  become  hopelessly  dilapidated,  was  taken 
down  in  1832.  Continuing  our  walk,  we  pass  through 
a  gate  where  a  descent  begins  into  a  wide-stretching 
field  of  springy  turf,  undulating  with  molehills. 
On  an  eminence  in  front  of  us  to  the  right  is  the 
Peasant's  Nest,  in  Cowper's  time  a  picturesque,  thatch- 
roofed  little  cottage  half-hidden  in  trees — now  a  trim 
modern  farm  roofed  with  tiles  : — 

Once  went  I  forth,  and  found,  till  then  unknown, 

A  cottage,  whither  oft  we  since  repair  : 

'Tis  perch'd  upon  the  green  hill-top,  but  close 

Environ'd  with  a  ring  of  branching  elms, 

That  overhang  the  thatch,  itself  unseen 


COWPER  223 

Peeps  at  the  vale  below ;  so  thick  beset 
With  foliage  of  such  dark  redundant  growth, 
I  called  the  low-roof  d  lodge  the  Peasant's  Nest. 

The  Task,  I.  221-227. 

Now,  striking  to  the  left  and  making  our  way  down 
a  clover -sown,  descending  field,  and  passing  over  a 
shallow  brook  through  a  little  gate,  we  find  ourselves  in 
the  First  Spinnie,  as  it  is  locally  called ;  the  Shrubbery, 
as  Cowper  generally  calls  it.  We  are  in  the  grounds  of 
the  Throckmortons,  and  in  the  very  centre  of  the  haunts 
so  loved  and  so  lovingly  described  by  the  poet.  We 
are  in  a  delicious  thick -wooded  solitude — with  trees 
and  shrubs  on  both  sides,  the  trees  overarching  and 
the  shrubs  admitting  only  at  intervals  the  narrowest  of 
paths.  A  couple  of  hundred  yards  to  the  right  brings 
us  to  the  site  of  the  Moss  House,  which,  as  Cowper 
knew  it,  was  a  simple  stone  structure  with  thatched 
roof  overgrown  with  ivy  and  moss,  having  on  one  side 
of  it  a  weeping  willow  and  in  front  a  circular  sheet  of 
water.  Now  all  these  have  disappeared,  and  all  that 
remains  is  the  site,  a  cleared  space  with  two  yew  trees 
on  each  side  of  it ;  the  bed  of  what  was  the  sheet  of 
circular  water  is  still,  however,  clearly  discernible  in  a 
shallow  hollow  in  the  greenery.  Impressive  indeed  it 
is  to  stand  there  and  to  recall  two  scenes  of  which  it 
was  the  witness — one  associated  with  the  happy  days 
preceding  the  breach  with  Lady  Austen,  and  one  of 
which  a  poem  is  the  record. 

Yesterday  we  [Cowper,  Mrs.  Unwin,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Jones,  and 
Lady  Austen]  all  dined  together  in  the  Spinnie,  a  most  delightful 


224  POETS'  COUNTRY 

retirement.  Lady  Austen's  lackey  and  a  lad  that  waits  on  me  in 
the  garden  drove  a  wheelbarrow  full  of  eatables  and  drinkables  to 
the  scene  of  our  fete  champetre,  A  board  laid  over  the  top  of  the 
wheelbarrow  served  us  for  a  table :  our  dining-room  was  a  root- 
house  lined  with  moss  and  ivy.  At  six  o'clock  the  servants,  who 
had  dined  under  a  great  elm  upon  the  ground,  at  a  little  distance, 
boiled  the  kettle,  and  the  said  wheelbarrow  served  us  for  a  tea- 
table.  We  then  took  a  walk  into  the  Wilderness  about  half  a  mile 
off,  and  were  at  home  again  a  little  after  eight,  having  spent  the 
day  together  from  noon  till  evening  without  one  cross  occurrence 
or  the  least  weariness  of  each  other :  a  happiness  few  parties  of 
pleasure  can  boast  of.1 

Of  a  very  different  mood  the  poem  is  the  record. 
THE  SHRUBBERY 

WRITTEN    IN    A    TIME    OF    AFFLICTION 

O  happy  shades — to  me  unblest ! 

Friendly  to  peace,  but  not  to  me ! 
How  ill  the  scene  that  offers  rest, 

And  heart  that  cannot  rest,  agree  ! 

This  glassy  stream,  that  spreading  pine, 
These  alders  quivering  to  the  breeze, 

Might  soothe  a  soul  less  hurt  than  mine, 
And  please,  if  any  thing  could  please. 

For  all  that  pleased  in  wood  or  lawn, 

While  Peace  possessed  these  silent  bowers, 

Ker  animating  smile  withdrawn, 
Has  lost  its  beauties  and  its  powers. 

The  Saint  or  Moralist  should  tread 
This  moss-grown  alley  musing,  slow  ; 

They  seek  like  me  the  secret  shade, 
But  not  like  me  to  nourish  woe ! 

1  Southey's  Cowper,  vol.  iv.  118-119. 


COWPER  225 

We  leave  the  Moss  House  and,  threading  our  way 
along  the  narrow  path,  in  the  direction  of  the  Peasant's 
Nest,  come  to  a  gate  which  opens  on  to  a  hilly  field. 
Here,  and  in  the  immediate  neighbourhood,  or  possibly 
a  little  farther  on  and  nearer  Weston,  may  be  confidently 
located  what  is  described  in  the  following  passage  in 
The  Winter  Walk  at  Noon  (296-320)  :— 

Neither  mist, 

Nor  freezing  sky  nor  sultry,  checking  me, 
Nor  stranger,  intermeddling  with  my  joy. 
E'en  in  the  spring  and  playtime  of  the  year, 
That  calls  the  unwonted  villager  abroad 
With  all  her  little  ones,  a  sportive  train, 
To  gather  kingcups  in  the  yellow  mead, 
And  prink  their  hair  with  daisies,  or  to  pick 
A  cheap  but  wholesome  salad  from  the  brook, 
These  shades  are  all  my  own.     The  tim'rous  hare, 
Grown  so  familiar  with  her  frequent  guest, 
Scarce  shuns  me  ;  and  the  stock-dove  un alarmed 
Sits  cooing  in  the  pine-tree,  nor  suspends 
His  long  love-ditty  for  my  near  approach. 
Drawn  from  his  refuge  in  some  lonely  elm, 
That  age  or  injury  has  hollowed  deep, 
Where,  on  his  bed  of  wool  and  matted  leaves, 
He  has  outslept  the  winter,  ventures  forth 
To  frisk  awhile,  and  bask  in  the  warm  sun, 
The  squirrel,  flippant,  pert,  and  full  of  play ; 
He  sees  me,  and  at  once,  swift  as  a  bird, 
Ascends  the  neighbouring  beech ;  there  whisks  his  brush, 
And  perks  his  ears,  and  stamps,  and  scolds  aloud, 
With  all  the  prettiness  of  feign'd  alarm, 
And  anger  insignificantly  fierce. 

Passing  through  this  field  with  its  leaf- covered  brook, 
the  Ho-brook,  Cowper's  "weedy  ditch" — it  had  been 

Q 


226  POETS'  COUNTRY 

running  parallel  with  us  all  through  the  Spinnie  on  our 
right  hand — we  come  to  the  Second  Spinnie.  A 
narrow,  grassy  path  winding  through  a  bosky  solitude 
of  beeches,  chestnuts,  and  hazels,  conducts  to  a  sombre 
congregation  of  yew  trees  —  the  Yew  Grove.  On 
emerging  from  the  Yew  Grove  we  enter  the  fine 
Chestnut  Avenue. 

Not  distant  far,  a  length  of  Colonnade 
Invites  us.  Monument  of  ancient  taste, 
Now  scorned. 

Thanks  to  Benevolus :  he  spares  me  yet 
These  chestnuts  ranged  in  corresponding  lines ; 
And,  though  himself  so  polished,  still  reprieves 
The  obsolete  prolixity  of  shade. 

The  Task,  I.  252-265. 

On  our  left  hand  is  a  noble  sweep  of  thickly-wooded 
semicircle ;  a  deep-rutted,  grass-grown  lane  conducts  us 
through  the  avenue  which  suddenly  forms  a  steep 
descent  leading  through  a  little  gate  to  the  Rustic 
Bridge. 

Descending  now  (but  cautious,  lest  too  fast,) 
A  sudden  steep,  upon  a  Rustic  Bridge 
We  pass  a  gulf,  in  which  the  willows  dip 
Their  pendent  boughs,  stooping  as  if  to  drink. 

Idem,  266-269. 

The  willows  have,  alas,  disappeared  and  the  gulf  is 
now  in  summer  a  dry  hollow.  And  now  we  can  either 
go  straight  along  through  an  avenue  of  oaks  up  a  steep 
ascent,  or  ascend,  on  the  left,  a  broad,  open  expanse  of 
springy  turf,  undulating  with  mole-hills,  making  our 


COWPER  227 

way  to  the  northern  extremity  of  the  park,  as  Cowper 
describes : — 

Hence,  ancle  deep  in  moss  and  flowery  thyme, 
We  mount  again,  and  feel  at  every  step 
Our  foot  half  sunk  in  hillocks  green  and  soft, 
Raised  by  the  mole,  the  miner  of  the  soil. 

Idem,  270-273. 

We  have  now  gained  the  summit,  and  right  in  front 
of  us  is  the  Alcove ;  here  every  detail  is  photographed 
by  Cowper,  even  to  the  defacements  on  the  walls  of 
the  Alcove.  The  Alcove,  rebuilt  or  much  repaired 
since  Cowper's  time,  protected  by  rails  in  front,  is 
hexagon  in  shape,  with  three  sides  open,  and  was  built 
by  John  Higgins  for  Sir  Robert  Throckmorton  in  1753. 
The  view  as  we  stand  in  front  of  it  is  superb,  being 
especially  remarkable  for  the  sylvan  pomp  of  extra- 
ordinarily diversified  trees.  But  we  leave  Cowper  to 
describe  it : — 

The  summit  gained,  behold  the  proud  alcove 
That  crowns  it !  yet  not  all  its  pride  secures 
The  grand  retreat  from  injuries  impressed 
By  rural  carvers,  who  with  knives  deface 
The  panels,  leaving  an  obscure,  rude  name, 
In  characters  uncouth,  and  spelt  amiss. 

•  ••••• 

Now  roves  the  eye  ; 
And,  posted  on  this  speculative  height, 
Exults  in  its  command.     The  sheepfold  here 
Pours  out  its  fleecy  tenants  o'er  the  glebe. 
At  first,  progressive  as  a  stream,  they  seek 
The  middle  field ;  but,  scatter'd  by  degrees, 
Each  to  his  choice,  soon  whiten  all  the  land. 
There  from  the  sunburnt  hay-field  homeward  creeps 


228  POETS'  COUNTRY 

The  loaded  wain ;  while,  lightened  of  its  charge, 
The  wain  that  meets  it  passes  swiftly  by. 

Nor  less  attractive  is  the  woodland  scene, 

Diversified  with  trees  of  every  growth, 

Ah'ke,  yet  various.     Here  the  grey  smooth  trunks 

Of  ash,  or  lime,  or  beech,  distinctly  shine 

Within  the  twilight  of  their  distant  shades ; 

There,  lost  behind  a  rising  ground,  the  wood 

Seems  sunk,  and  shortened  to  its  topmost  boughs. 

No  tree  in  all  the  grove  but  has  its  charms, 

Though  each  its  hue  peculiar ;  paler  some, 

And  of  a  wannish  grey ;  the  willow  such, 

And  poplar,  that  with  silver  lines  his  leaf, 

And  ash  far-stretching  his  umbrageous  arm ; 

Of  deeper  green  the  elm  ;  and  deeper  still, 

Lord  of  the  woods,  the  long-surviving  oak. 

Some  glossy-leaved  and  shining  in  the  sun, 

The  maple,  and  the  beech  of  oily  nuts 

Prolific,  and  the  lime  at  dewy  eve 

Diffusing  odours ;  nor  unnoted  pass 

The  sycamore,  capricious  in  attire, 

Now  green,  now  tawny,  and  ere  autumn  yet 

Have  changed  the  woods,  in  scarlet  honours  bright. 

O'er  these,  but  far  beyond  (a  spacious  map 

Of  hill  and  valley  interposed  between,) 

The  Ouse,  dividing  the  well-watered  land, 

Now  glitters  in  the  sun,  and  now  retires, 

As  bashful,  yet  impatient  to  be  seen. 

The  Sofa,  279-325. 

About  forty  yards  in  front  of  the  Alcove  the 
ground  suddenly  dips  into  a  narrow  runnel  which, 
dry  in  summer  but  flooded  in  winter,  intersects  the 
grassy  expanse  and  then  as  suddenly  ascends  into  a 
steepy  eminence. 

So  Cowper  continues  : — 


COWPER  229 

Hence  the  declivity  is  sharp  and  short, 
And  such  the  re-ascent ;  between  them  weeps 
A  little  Naiad  her  impoverished  urn 
All  summer  long,  which  winter  fills  again. 

Idem,  326-328. 

In  a  line  with  the  Alcove,  just  in  front  of  it,  about 
a  quarter  of  a  mile  distant,  is  a  superb  lime-tree  avenue, 
traversed  by  a  grassy  path.  But  let  Cowper  describe : — 

Ye  fallen  avenues !  once  more  I  mourn 
Your  fate  unmerited,  once  more  rejoice 
That  yet  a  remnant  of  your  race  survives. 
How  airy  and  how  light  the  graceful  arch, 
Yet  awful  as  the  consecrated  roof 
Re-echoing  pious  anthems !  while  beneath 
The  checker'd  earth  seems  restless  as  a  flood 
Brushed  by  the  wind.     So  sportive  is  the  light 
Shot  through  the  boughs,  it  dances  as  they  dance, 
Shadow  and  sunshine  intermingling  quick, 
And  darkening  and  enlightening,  as  the  leaves 
Play  wanton,  every  moment,  every  spot. 

Idem,  338-348. 

From  the  Lime  Avenue  we  pass  into  the  Wilderness. 

We  tread  the  Wilderness,  whose  well-roll'd  walks 
With  curvature  of  slow  and  easy  sweep — 
Deception  innocent — give  ample  space 
To  narrow  bounds. 

This  was  Cowper's  favourite  haunt,  both  when  he  was 
at  Olney  and  when  he  was  at  Weston,  a  private  key 
letting  him  into  the  enclosure.  The  rooks  still  cease- 
lessly caw  in  the  elms  near ;  there  are  the  walks 
intersecting  it  through  which  he  so  often  wandered 
both  alone  and  with  his  friends,  and  there  the  Gothic 


230  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Temple  which  has  recently  been  repaired.  But  the 
glories  among  which  Cowper  strayed  : — 

Laburnum,  rich 

In  streaming  gold  ;  Syringa,  ivory  pure  ; 
The  scentless  and  the  scented  Rose ;  this  red, 
And  of  an  humbler  growth,  the  other  tall 
And  throwing  up  into  the  darkest  gloom 
Of  neighbouring  Cypress,  or  more  sable  Yew, 
Her  silver  globes,  light  as  the  foamy  surf 
That  the  wind  severs  from  the  broken  wave  ; 
The  Lilac,  various  in  array,  now  white, 
Now  sanguine,  and  her  beauteous  head  now  set 
With  purple  spikes  pyramidal,  as  if 
Studious  of*  ornament,  yet  unresolved 
Which  hue  she  most  approved,  she  chose  them  all ; 
Copious  of  flowers  the  Woodbine,  pale  and  wan, 
But  well  compensating  their  sickly  looks 
With  never-cloying  odours,  early  and  late  ; 
Hypericum  all  bloom,  so  thick  a  swarm 
Of  flowers,  like  flies  clothing  her  slender  rods, 
That  scarce  a  leaf  appears  ;  Mezereoii  too, 
Though  leafless,  well  attired,  and  thick  beset 
With  blushing  wreaths,  investing  every  spray ; 
Althaea  with  the  purple  eye  ;  the  Broom, 
Yellow  and  bright,  as  bullion  unalloyed, 
Her  blossoms  ;  and  luxuriant  above  all 
The  Jasmine,  throwing  wide  her  elegant  sweets, 
The  deep  dark  green  of  whose  unvarnished  leaf 
Makes  more  conspicuous,  and  illumines  more 
The  bright  profusion  of  her  scattered  stars — 

(Winter  Walk  at  Noon,  149-176) 

— some  of  these  remain,  but  most  have  disappeared. 
The  broad  walk  which  borders  the  northern  side  of  the 
Wilderness  has  more  than  one  object  vividly  recalling 
the  poet.  We  find,  for  instance,  the  urn  on  which  is 


COWPER  231 

engraved  the  well-known  epitaph  on  Sir  John  Throck- 
morton's  pointer,  beginning — 

Here  lies  one  who  never  drew 
Blood  himself,  yet  many  slew,  etc. ; 

and  another  urn  to  the  memory  of  Fop,  Lady  Throck- 
morton's  puppy,  with  the  epitaph  written  by  Cowper 
inscribed  on  the  pedestal.  Here,  too,  may  be  seen  the 
bust  of  Homer,  with  the  Greek  distich  from  Cowper's 
pen,  which  was  presented  to  him  by  his  friend  Johnson, 
and  which  formerly  stood  in  the  "  Shrubbery "  at 
Weston  Lodge. 

But  there  are  other  localities  about  Weston  and 
Olney  not  included  in  the  semicircle  just  traversed 
by  us,  which  have  also  found  their  laureate  in  Cowper 
and  which  are  quite  as  intimately  associated  with  him. 
We  pass  out  of  the  Wilderness  into  a  lane  running 
parallel  with  the  Lime  Walk  Avenue — not,  as  Cowper 
could  do,  through  a  door  in  the  boundary -wall, 
but  from  the  high-road.  A  few  hundred  yards  brings 
us  parallel  with  the  Alcove ;  we  turn  sharply  to  the 
right  and  pass  along  the  lane  running  at  the  back  of 
the  Alcove.  A  gate  leads  us  into  "Stumpy  Field." 
We  make  our  way  over  its  steepy  undulating  surface, 
and  see  on  an  eminence  to  the  right  Hungry  Hall, 
with  its  spinnie  trees  dotted  with  magpies'  nests. 
Then,  making  our  way  by  a  level-crossing,  we  pass  over 
the  Midland  Railway,  a  richly-wooded  country  on  all 
sides  of  us.  To  our  left,  a  thick  mass  of  green  foliage, 
is  Dinglederry  ;  just  in  front,  slightly  inclining  towards 


232  POETS'  COUNTRY 

the  left,  is  "  Kilwick's  echoing  wood."     In  the  field  we 
are  traversing  we  have  the  scene  of  The  Needless  Alarm  : 

There  is  a  field,  through  which  I  often  pass, 
Thick  overspread  with  moss  and  silky  grass, 
Adjoining  close  to  Kilwick's  echoing  wood. 

A  narrow  brook,  by  rushy  banks  conceal'd, 
Runs  in  a  bottom,  and  divides  the  field ; 
Oaks  intersperse  it,  that  had  once  a  head, 
But  now  wear  crests  of  oven-wood  instead. 

Sheep  graz'd  the  field ;  some  with  soft  bosom  press'd 
The  herb  as  soft,  while  nibbling  stray'd  the  rest. 

But  see  the  whole  charming  poem. 

A  gate  admits  us  into  the  wood.  As  we  enter  we  see 
in  front  of  us  a  long,  rutty,  grassy  vista,  till  we  come  to 
a  point  with  an  avenue  to  the  right  and  an  avenue  to 
the  left.  We  take  the  turn  to  the  left,  along  a  grassy 
path  fragrant  with  the  perfume  of  wild  mint,  trees  on 
each  side  of  us,  some  of  them  festooned  with  twining 
woodbine  and  trailers.  Here,  perhaps,  Cowper  found 
the  original  of: — 

As  woodbine  weds  the  plant  within  her  reach, 
Rough  elm,  or  smooth-grained  ash,  or  glossy  beech, 
In  spiral  rings  ascends  the  trunk,  and  lays 
Her  golden  tassels  on  the  leafy  sprays. 

Retirement,  229-232. 

At  the  end  a  gate  admits  us  into  what  is  now  known 
as  Cowper's  Oak  Field,  and  right  in  front  of  us,  in 
imposing  singularity,  is  the  famous  Yardley  Oak  : — 


THE   OUSE  AT   OLNEY 

The  Ouse  at  Olney  does  uot  look  an  attractive  river,  but 
lias  much  quiet  charm  as  it  winds  from  Weston  through 
what  may  be  called  "The  Cowper  Country."  So  imper- 
ceptible is  its  flow,  there  is  no  current  to  break  the  reflections 
of  sky  or  foliage  ;  the  clouds  repeat  themselves  in  its  waters, 
even  the  rays  of  light,  suggesting  the  calm  scenes  from 
which  Cowper  drew  his  inspiration. 


COWPER  233 

Survivor  sole,  and  hardly  such,  of  all 
That  once  lived  here,  thy  brethren! — at  my  birth 
(Since  which  I  number  threescore  winters  past) 
A  shattered  veteran,  hollow-trunked  perhaps, 
As  now,  and  with  excoriate  forks  deform. 

Time  made  thee  what  thou  wast,  king  of  the  woods, 
And  Time  hath  made  thee  what  thou  art — a  cave 
For  owls  to  roost  in.     Once  thy  spreading  boughs 
O'erhung  the  champaign ;  and  the  numerous  flocks 
That  grazed  it  stood  beneath  that  ample  cope 
Uncrowded,  yet  safe-sheltered  from  the  storm. 
No  flock  frequents  thee  now.     Thou  hast  outlived 
Thy  popularity,  and  art  become 
(Unless  verse  rescue  thee  awhile)  a  thing 
Forgotten,  as  the  foliage  of  thy  youth. 

First  a  seedling,  hid  in  grass ; 
Then  twig ;  then  sapling ;  and,  as  century  rolled 
Slow  after  century,  a  giant-bulk 
Of  girth  enormous,  with  moss-cushioned  root 
Upheaved  above  the  soil,  and  sides  embossed 
With  prominent  wens  globose, — till  at  the  last 
The  rottenness,  which  Time  is  charged  to  inflict 
On  other  mighty  ones,  found  also  thee. 

Thine  arms  have  left  thee.     Winds  have  rent  them  off 
Long  since,  and  rovers  of  the  forest  wild 
With  bow  and  shaft  have  burnt  them.     Some  have  left 
A  splintered  stump,  bleached  to  a  snowy  white  : 
And  some  memorial  none,  where  once  they  grew. 
Yet  Life  still  lingers  in  thee,  and  puts  forth 
Proof  not  contemptible  of  what  she  can, 
Even  where  Death  predominates.     The  Spring 
Finds  thee  not  less  alive  to  her  sweet  force 
Than  yonder  upstarts  of  the  neighbouring  wood, 
So  much  thy  juniors,  who  their  birth  received 
Half  a  millennium  since  the  date  of  thine. 


234  POETS'  COUNTRY 

More  than  a  century  and  a  quarter  has  passed  since 
the  eyes  of  Cowper  rested  on  it,  and  he  recorded  what 
he  saw.  Since  then  scarcely  any  change  is  perceptible 
in  its  remains ;  we  see  it  as  Cowper  saw  it.  No  doubt 
he  would  have  been  gratified  had  he  witnessed  what 
is  now  a  conspicuous  feature  in  it,  thougli  it  scarcely 
adds  to  its  beauty,  a  placard  bearing  the  following 
inscription  : — 

Out  of  respect  to  the  memory  of  the  poet  Cowper,  the  Marquis 
of  Northampton  is  particularly  desirous  of  preserving  this  oak. 
Notice  is  hereby  given  that  any  person  defacing  or  otherwise 
injuring  it  will  be  prosecuted  according  to  law — 

a  pious  if  prosaic  provision  which  has  no  doubt  pre- 
vented this  memorable  relic  from  being  carried  bodily 
away  by  relic-hunters. 

A  few  yards  to  the  left  is  another  oak,  which  must 
also  have  existed  in  Cowper's  time. 

Leaving  the  oak  behind  us,  we  now  enter  Yardley 
Chase. 

The  grassy  swarth,  close  cropped  by  nibbling  sheep, 
And  skirted  thick  with  intertexture  firm 
Of  thorny  boughs — 

a  favourite  haunt  of  Cowper's.  About  a  mile  onward, 
near  what  was  in  his  time  known  as  Chase  Farm,  but 
what  is  now  called  the  Ranger's  Lodge,  there  is  another 
gigantic  oak  known  to  him  as  "  Judith,"  because  there 
was  a  tradition  that  it  had  been  planted  by  the  Lady 
Judith,  niece  to  William  the  Conqueror  and  the  wife  of 
Earl  Waltheof,  but  now  usually  called  "  Gog." 


COWPER  235 

Of  Yardley  Chase  we  have  a  vivid  sketch  in  The 
Sofa,  526  seqq.  :— 

The  common,  overgrown  with  fern,  and  rough 
With  prickly  gorse,  that,  shapeless  and  deformed, 
And  dangerous  to  the  touch,  has  yet  its  bloom, 
And  decks  itself  with  ornaments  of  gold, 
Yields  no  unpleasing  ramble  ;  there  the  turf 
Smells  fresh,  and,  rich  in  odoriferous  herbs 
And  fungous  fruits  of  earth,  regales  the  sense 
With  luxury  of  unexpected  sweets. 

Then,  as  now,  it  was  a  favourite  resort  of  gipsies, 
and  what  he  describes  in  the  lines  : — 

I  see  a  column  of  slow-rising  smoke 
O'ertop  the  lofty  wood  that  skirts  the  wild. 

A  kettle,  slung 

Between  two  poles  upon  a  stick  transverse, 
Receives  the  morsel — flesh  obscene  of  dog, 
Or  vermin,  or  at  best  of  cock  purloin'd 
From  his  accustom'd  perch, 

may  still  often  be  seen  as  the  tourist  explores  these 
haunts. 

It  remains  to  notice  one  or  two  other  favourite 
haunts  of  Cowper,  descriptions  of  which  may  be  found 
in  his  poems.  For  this  purpose  we  must  return  to 
Olney.  He  would  often  make  his  way  along  the  foot- 
path to  Clifton  Reynes,  passing  the  Church,  the  Rectory, 
and  the  Hall — of  which  all  that  remains  now  is  one  of 
its  appurtenances,  the  circular  dovecot.  On  his  way 
he  would  linger  by  the  old  water-mill,  and  here  one 


236  POETS'  COUNTRY 

winter  morning  he  saw  what  he  so  vividly  describes  in 
the  Fifth  Book  of  The  Task  :- 

On  the  flood, 

Indurated  and  fixed,  the  snowy  weight 
Lies  undissolv'd  ;  while  silently  beneath, 
And  unperceived,  the  current  steals  away. 
Not  so  where,  scornful  of  a  check,  it  leaps 
The  mill-dam,  dashes  on  the  restless  wheel, 
And  wantons  in  the  pebbly  gulf  below  : 
No  frost  can  bind  it  there ;  its  utmost  force 
Can  but  arrest  the  light  and  smoky  mist, 
That  in  its  fall  the  liquid  sheet  throws  wide. 
And  see  where  it  has  hung  the  embroidered  banks 
With  forms  so  various,  that  no  powers  of  art, 
The  pencil  or  the  pen,  may  trace  the  scene  ! 
Here  glittering  turrets  rise,  upbearing  high 
(Fantastic  misarrangement !)  on  the  roof, 
Large  growth  of  what  may  seem  the  sparkling  trees 
And  shrubs  of  fairy  land.     The  crystal  drops, 
That  trickle  down  the  branches,  fast  congeal'd, 
Shoot  into  pillars  of  pellucid  length, 
And  prop  the  pile  they  but  adorned  before. 

The  wet,  marshy  track  through  the  fields  between 
Olney  and  Clifton  Reynes  is  the  scene  of  the  amusing 
poem,  The  Distressed  Travellers.  The  beautiful  view 
from  the  ridge  of  Clifton  Hill  furnishes  him,  like  that 
"  from  the  Eminence,"  with  all  the  details  of  his  most 
characteristic  prospect-pictures. 

Another  favourite  walk  for  some  years  was  to  the 
poplar  field  at  Lavendon  Mill.  "There  was,"  he 
says  in  a  letter  to  Lady  Hesketh,  dated  May  1,  1786, 
"  in  a  neighbouring  parish  called  Lavendon,  a  field,  one 
side  of  which  formed  a  terrace,  and  the  other  was  planted 


COWPER  237 

with  poplars,  at  whose  foot  ran  the  Ouse,  that  I  used  to 
account  a  little  paradise ;  but  the  poplars  have  been 
felled,  and  the  scene  has  suffered  so  much  by  the  loss 
that,  though  still  in  point  of  prospect  beautiful,  it 
has  not  charm  sufficient  to  attract  me  now."  This 
forms  the  subject  of  one  of  the  most  charming  of 
his  poems,  The  Poplar  Field  :— 

The  poplars  are  felled  ; — farewell  to  the  shade, 
And  the  whispering  sound  of  the  cool  colonnade  ; 
The  winds  play  no  longer  and  sing  in  the  leaves, 
Nor  Ouse  on  his  bosom  their  image  receives. 

Twelve  years  have  elapsed,  since  I  last  took  a  view 
Of  my  favourite  field,  and  the  bank  where  they  grew  ; 
And  now  in  the  grass  behold  they  are  laid, 
And  the  tree  is  my  seat,  that  once  lent  me  a  shade. 

The  blackbird  is  fled  to  another  retreat, 
Where  the  hazels  afford  him  a  screen  from  the  heat, 
And  the  scene,  where  his  melody  charm'd  me  before, 
Resounds  with  his  sweet-flowing  ditty  no  more. 

My  fugitive  years  are  all  hasting  away, 

And  I  must  ere  long  lie  as  lowly  as  they, 

With  a  turf  on  my  breast,  and  a  stone  at  my  head, 

Ere  another  such  grove  shall  arise  in  its  stead. 

At  the  beautiful  old  mansion  of  Gayhurst,  so 
intimately  associated  with  the  Gunpowder  Plot  con- 
spiracy, he  was  a  frequent  visitor.  Under  its  then 
owner,  a  Mr.  Wrighte,  it  was  celebrated  for  its  pine- 
apples, a  present  of  which  inspired  Cowper's  graceful 
little  apologue,  The  Pineapple  and  the  Bee. 


238  POETS'  COUNTRY 

It  must  certainly  remain  matter  for  congratulation 
that  there  still  remain,  in  these  all-transforming  times, 
scenes  which  recall  so  exactly  a  world  long  passed  away 
— a  world  consecrated  by  a  poet  who  for  very  many  of 
his  fellow-men  can  never  lose  his  charm.  No  one  can 
traverse  them  with  his  poems  in  their  hands  without 
the  liveliest  admiration  for  the  studious  and  happy 
fidelity  with  which  he  painted  what  he  saw.  As 
minutely  and  scrupulously  truthful  as  Gilbert  White, 
he  has  done  for  Olney  and  Weston  what  White  did  for 
Selborne ;  but,  a  true  poet,  he  has  done  incomparably 
more — he  has  consecrated  as  well  as  described. 


CRABBE  AND  ALDBOROUGH 

WHAT  Stoke  Pogis  and  its  neighbourhood  was  to  Gray, 
what  Olney  and  Weston  were  to  Cowper,  that  is 
Aldborough  to  Crabbe.  Crabbe's  descriptive  poetry 
is  essentially  local,  its  source  was  always  from  what 
surrounded  him  and  daily  met  his  eyes.  He  was 
associated  with  other  places  besides  Aldborough — with 
Woodbridge,  with  Stathern  in  Rutlandshire,  with 
Muston  in  Leicestershire,  with  Parham,  Glemham,  and 
Rendham  in  Suffolk,  and  lastly  with  Trowbridge  in 
Wiltshire,  where  he  lived  for  the  last  eighteen  years  of 
his  life.  And  the  scenery  of  most  of  these  places  and  of 
those  in  the  neighbourhood  may  be  traced  occasionally 
in  his  poetry.  But  more  than  two-thirds  of  what  he  has 
described  centres  round  Aldborough.  Here  in  humble 
life,  the  son  of  one  of  the  collectors  of  the  salt-duties,  in 
the  town,  he  was  born  on  Christmas  Eve  in  1754.  Here 
he  lived  till  his  eighteenth  year  in  the  heart  of  its  marine 
life,  with  every  nook  and  cranny  of  it  familiar  to  him — 
the  sea  in  all  its  moods  and  aspects,  the  dreary  marsh 
wastes,  the  river,  the  mud-banks,  the  shingly  beach, 
the  arid  sand  tracks,  and  "  the  wild  amphibious  race  " 

239 


240  POETS'  COUNTRY 

which  people  its  fishing-smacks  and  its  hovels.  Here, 
after  walking  the  hospitals  in  London,  he  set  up  in 
practice,  dismally  to  fail ;  and  here  too,  after  starvation, 
literally  staring  him  in  the  face,  had  driven  him  to 
exchange  Medicine  for  the  Church,  he  had  his  first 
curacy.  It  was  thus  associated  with  the  most  im- 
pressionable and  the  most  momentous  period  of  his 
whole  life,  and  indeed  his  work  generally  as  a  poet 
took  its  ply  and  its  colour  from  these  early  associa- 
tions. 

Beyond  the  general  features  of  its  sea  and  back- 
ground, there  is  nothing  in  the  Aldborough  of  to-day 
which  reminds  us  of  the  Aldborough  of  Crabbe's 
photographs.  In  his  time  it  consisted  of  two  parallel 
and  unpaved  streets  running  between  mean  and  scram- 
bling cabins  occupied  by  seafaring  men,  fishermen,  and 
pilots.  "  The  beach  " — let  me  borrow  the  description 
given  by  Crabbe's  son  in  his  admirable  biography  of 
his  father — "consists  of  successive  ridges,  large  rolled 
stones,  then  loose  shingles,  and  at  the  fall  of  the  tide  a 
strip  of  fine  hard  sand.  .  .  .  The  broad  river  called  the 
Aid  approaches  the  sea  close  to  Aldborough  within  a 
few  hundred  yards,  and  then  turning  abruptly  continues 
to  run  about  ten  miles  parallel  with  the  beach,  from 
which,  for  the  most  part,  a  dreary  strip  of  marsh  and 
waste  alone  divides  it,  until  it  at  length  finds  its 
embouchure  at  Orford. "  Crabbe  has  given  us  pictures 
of  the  whole  line  of  the  coast  from  Orford  to  Dun  wick, 
Slaughden  Quay  in  particular  being  elaborated,  as 


CRABBE   AND   ALDBOROUGH         241 

his    son   says,   with   all   the   minuteness   of   a   Dutch 
landscape. 

With  ceaseless  motion  comes  and  goes  the  tide, 
Flowing,  it  fills  the  channel  vast  and  wide ; 
Then  back  to  sea,  with  strong  majestic  sweep 
It  rolls,  in  ebb  yet  terrible  and  deep ; 
Here  Samphire-banks  and  Saltwort  bound  the  flood, 
There  stakes  and  sea-weeds  withering  on  the  mud ; 
And  higher  up,  a  ridge  of  all  things  base, 
Which  some  strong  tide  has  roll'd  upon  the  place. 

The  Borough,  Letter  1. 

In  the  Twenty-Second  Letter  of  the  same  poem  is 
painted  this  scene  on  the  River  Aid  as  it  flows  past 
Slaughden  Quay  : — 

At  the  same  time  the  same  dull  views  to  see, 

The  bounding  marsh-bank  and  the  blighted  tree ; 

The  water  only,  when  the  tides  were  high, 

When  low,  the  mud  half-cover'd  and  half-dry ; 

The  sunburnt  tar  that  blisters  on  the  planks, 

And  bank-side  stakes  in  their  uneven  ranks  ; 

Heaps  of  entangled  weeds  that  slowly  float, 

As  the  tide  rolls  by  the  impeded  boat. 

When  tides  were  neap,  and,  in  the  sultry  day, 

Through  the  tall  bounding  mud-banks  made  their  way, 

Which  on  each  side  rose  swelling,  and  below 

The  dark,  warm  flood  ran  silently  and  slow ; 

There  anchoring,  Peter  chose  from  man  to  hide, 

There  hang  his  head,  and  view  the  lazy  tide 

In  its  hot,  slimy  channel  slowly  glide; 

Where  the  small  eels  that  left  the  deeper  way 

For  the  warm  shore,  within  the  shallows  play ; 

Where  gaping  muscles,  left  upon  the  mud, 

Slope  their  slow  passage  to  the  fallen  flood : — 

Here,  dull  and  hopeless,  he'd  lie  down  and  trace 

How  sidelong  crabs  had  scrawl'd  their  crooked  race, 

R 


242  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Or  sadly  listen  to  the  tuneless  cry 

Of  fishing  gull  or  clanging  golden-eye  ; 

What  time  the  sea-birds  to  the  marsh  would  come, 

And  the  loud  bittern,  from  the  bull-rush  home, 

Gave  from  the  salt  ditch  side  the  bellowing  boom. 

The  Borough,  Letter  XXII. 

In  the  Ninth  Letter  we  have  the  same  scene  by 
moonlight : — 

What  time  the  moon  arising  shows  the  mud, 

A  shining  border  to  the  silver  flood ; 

When,  by  her  dubious  light,  the  meanest  views, 

Chalk,  stones,  and  stakes,  obtain  the  richest  hues ; 

And  when  the  cattle,  as  they  gazing  stand, 

Seem  nobler  objects  than  when  viewed  from  land ; 

Then  anchor'd  vessels  in  the  way  appear, 

And  sea-boys  greet  them  as  they  pass — "  What  cheer  ?  " 

The  sleeping  shell-ducks  at  the  sound  arise, 

And  utter  loud  their  unharmonious  cries  ; 

Fluttering  they  move  their  weedy  beds  among, 

Or,  instant  diving,  hide  their  plumeless  young. 

The  Borough,  Letter  IX. 

Not  less  vivid  in  its  elaborate  realism  is  the  picture 
given  in  The  Lover's  Journey  of  the  scenery  between 
Aldborough  and  Beccles  : — 

On  either  side 

Is  level  fen,  a  prospect  wild  and  wide, 
With  dikes  on  either  hand  by  Ocean's  self  supplied. 
Far  on  the  right  the  distant  sea  is  seen, 
And  salt  the  springs  that  feed  the  marsh  between ; 
Beneath  an  ancient  bridge,  the  straiten'd  flood 
Rolls  through  its  sloping  banks  of  slimy  mud  ; 
Near  it  a  sunken  boat  resists  the  tide, 
That  frets  and  hurries  to  th'  opposing  side  ; 
The  rushes  sharp,  that  on  the  borders  grow, 


CRABBE   AND   ALDBOROUGH         243 

Bend  their  brown  flow'rets  to  the  stream  below, 

Impure  in  all  its  course,  in  all  its  progress  slow ; 

Here  a  grave  Flora  scarcely  deigns  to  bloom, 

Nor  wears  a  rosy  blush,  nor  sheds  perfume  ; 

The  few  dull  flowers  that  o'er  the  place  are  spread 

Partake  the  nature  of  their  fenny  bed  ; 

Here  on  its  wiry  stem,  in  rigid  bloom, 

Grows  the  salt  lavender  that  lacks  perfume ; 

Here  the  dwarf  sallows  creep,  the  sept-foil  harsh, 

And  the  soft,  slimy  mallow  of  the  marsh ; 

Low  on  the  ear  the  distant  billows  sound, 

And  just  in  view  appears  their  stony  bound ; 

No  hedge  nor  tree  conceals  the  glowing  sun, 

Birds,  save  a  wat'ry  tribe,  the  district  shun, 

Nor  chirp  among  the  reeds  where  bitter  waters  run. 

Tales,  X. 

Now,  turning  from  these  marine  pictures,  let  us  take 
a  companion  one  of  the  heath  track  adjoining  the  coast : 

Lo !  where  the  heath,  with  withering  brake  grown  o'er, 
Lends  the  light  turf  that  warms  the  neighbouring  poor : 
From  thence  a  length  of  burning  sand  appears, 
Where  the  thin  harvest  waves  its  wither'd  ears ; 
Rank  weeds,  that  every  art  and  care  defy, 
Reign  o'er  the  land,  and  rob  the  blighted  rye : 
There  thistles  stretch  their  prickly  arms  afar, 
And  to  the  ragged  infants  threaten  war ; 
There  poppies  nodding,  mock  the  hope  of  toil ; 
There  the  blue  bugloss  paints  the  sterile  soil ; 
Hardy  and  high,  above  the  slender  sheaf, 
The  slimy  mallow  waves  her  silky  leaf; 
O'er  the  young  shoot  the  charlock  throws  a  shade, 
And  clasping  tares  cling  round  the  sickly  blade ; 
With  mingled  tints  the  rocky  coasts  abound, 
And  a  sad  splendour  vainly  shines  around. 

The  Village,  Book  I. 

How  vivid,  too,  is  his  picture  of  the  approach  to 


244  POETS'  COUNTRY 

the   sea   from   the   inland   fields   and   the   walk   along 
the  shore : — 

Through  the  green  lane, — then  linger  in  the  mead, — 
Stray  o'er  the  heath  in  all  its  purple  bloom, — 
And  pluck  the  blossom  where  the  wild  bees  hum ; 
Then  through  the  broomy  bound  with  ease  they  pass, 
And  press  the  sandy  sheep-walk's  slender  grass, 
Where  dwarfish  flowers  among  the  gorse  are  spread, 
And  the  lamb  browses  by  the  linnet's  bed  ; 
Then  'cross  the  bounding  brook  they  make  their  way 
O'er  its  rough  bridge — and  there  behold  the  bay  ! — 
The  ocean  smiling  to  the  fervid  sun — 
The  waves  that  faintly  fall  and  slowly  run — 
The  ships  at  distance  and  the  boats  at  hand. 

Ships  softly  sinking  in  the  sleepy  sea : 
Now  arm  in  arm,  now  parted,  they  behold 
The  glitt'ring  waters  on  the  shingles  roll'd. 

And  search  for  crimson  weeds,  which  spreading  flow, 
Or  lie  like  pictures  on  the  sand  below ; 
With  all  those  bright  red  pebbles,  that  the  sun 
Through  the  small  waves  so  softly  shines  upon ; 
And  those  live  lucid  jellies  which  the  eye 
Delights  to  trace  as  they  swim  glittering  by. 

The  Borough,  Letter  XXIII. 

In  the  following  passage  we  have  a  wonderfully 
graphic  picture  of  the  wide  barren  heathlands  which 
stretch  beyond  Leiston  Common  towards  Dunwick  : — 

"  This  neat  low  gorse,"  said  he,  "  with  golden  bloom, 
Delights  each  sense,  is  beauty,  is  perfume ; 
And  this  gay  ling,  with  all  its  purple  flowers, 
A  man  at  leisure  might  admire  for  hours  ; 
This  greeii-fring'd  cup-moss  has  a  scarlet  tip." 


CRABBE   AND   ALDBOROUGH         245 

Onward  he  went,  and  fiercer  grew  the  heat, 
Dust  rose  in  clouds  before  his  horse's  feet ; 
For  now  he  pass'd  through  lanes  of  burning  sand. 
Bounds  to  thin  crops  or  yet  uncultur'd  land  ; 
Where  the  dark  poppy  flourish'd  on  the  dry 
And  sterile  soil,  and  mock'd  the  thin-set  rye. 

The  very  lane  has  sweets  that  all  admire, 
The  rambling  suckling,  and  the  vigorous  brier ; 
See !  wholesome  wormwood  grows  beside  the  way, 
Where,  dew-press'd  yet,  the  dog-rose  bends  the  spray ; 
Fresh  herbs  the  fields,  fair  shrubs  the  banks  adorn, 
And  snow-white  bloom  falls  flaky  from  the  thorn. 

A  botanist  and  zoologist,  he  delights,  like  Tenny- 
son, in  minutely  discriminating  particulars,  as  in  the 
epithets  in  the  lines  already  quoted  : — 

Here  on  its  wiry  stem,  in  rigid  bloom, 
Grows  the  salt  lavender  that  lacks  perfume ; 
Here  the  dwarf  sallows  creep,  the  sept-foil  harsh, 
And  the  soft,  slimy  mallow  of  the  marsh  ; 

or  take   the   description   of  Lepraria  Jolithus  in   the 
Second  Letter  of  The  Borough  : — 

See  how  Nature's  work  is  done, 
How  slowly  true  she  lays  her  colours  on ; 
When  her  least  speck  upon  the  hardest  flint 
Has  mark  and  form,  and  is  a  living  tint ; 
And  so  embodied  with  the  rock,  that  few 
Can  the  small  germ  upon  the  substance  view. 

There,  in  the  rugged  soil,  [seeds]  safely  dwell, 
Till  showers  and  suns  the  subtle  atoms  swell, 
And  spread  th'  enduring  foliage  ; — then  we  trace 
The  freckled  flower  upon  the  flinty  base ; 
These  all  increase,  till  in  unnoticed  years 
The  stony  tower  as  grey  with  age  appears ; 


246  POETS'  COUNTRY 

With  coats  of  vegetation,  thinly  spread, 
Coat  above  coat,  the  living  on  the  dead  : 
These  then  dissolve  to  dust,  and  make  a  way 
For  bolder  foliage,  nurs'd  by  their  decay. 

The  sea  in  all  its  moods  and  phases,  in  all  its  infinite 
variety,  with  all  its  associations  and  phenomena,  the  life 
that  fills  it,  the  birds  that  haunt  it,  its  splendours  and 
its  glooms  from  sun  and  moon  and  night  and  sweeping 
or  brooding  cloud,  he  has  painted  as  no  poet  since 
Homer  has  done.  Look  at  the  following  : — 

Then  the  broad  bosom  of  the  ocean  keeps 
An  equal  motion ;  swelling  as  it  sleeps, 
Then  slowly  sinking ;  curling  to  the  strand, 
Faint,  lazy  waves  o'ercreep  the  rigid  sand, 
Or  tap  the  tarry  boat  with  gentle  blow, 
And  back  return  in  silence,  smooth  and  slow. 
The  Borough,  Letter  I. 

When  were  sea-gulls  painted  like  this  ? — 

Pleasant  it  was  to  view  the  sea-gulls  strive 

Against  the  storm,  or  in  the  ocean  dive 

With  eager  scream,  or  when  they  dropping  gave 

Their  closing  wings,  to  sail  upon  the  wave ; 

Then  as  the  winds  and  waters  rag'd  around, 

And  breaking  billows  mix'd  their  deafening  sound, 

They  on  the  rolling  deep  securely  hung, 

And  calmly  rode  the  restless  waves  among. 

Nor  pleased  it  less  around  me  to  behold, 

Far  up  the  beach,  the  yesty  sea-foam  roll'd ; 

Or  from  the  shore  upborne,  to  see  on  high 

Its  frothing  flakes  in  wild  confusion  fly  : 

While  the  salt  spray  that  clashing  billows  form 

Gave  to  the  taste  a  feeling  of  the  storm. 

Tales  of  the  Hall,  Book  IV. 


CRABBE   AND   ALDBOROUGH         247 

It  may  be  added  that  the  whole  of  the  scene  of 
which  this  is  a  part  is  almost  a  photograph  of  the 
desolate  marshland  between  Aldborough  and  Orford. 

In  the  following  picture  Crabbe  is  not  perhaps  at 
his  best,  but  it  is  vivid  : — 

The  breaking  billows  cast  the  flying  foam 

Upon  the  billows  rising — all  the  deep 

Is  restless  change ;  the  waves  so  swell'd  and  steep, 

Breaking  and  sinking,  and  the  sunken  swells, 

Nor  one,  one  moment,  in  its  station  dwells ; 

But  nearer  land  you  may  the  billows  trace, 

As  if  contending  in  their  watery  chase  ; 

May  watch  the  mightiest  till  the  shoal  they  reach, 

Then  break  and  hurry  to  their  utmost  stretch ; 

Curl'd  as  they  come,  they  strike  with  furious  force, 

And  then  re-flowing,  take  their  grating  course, 

Raking  the  rounded  flints. 

The  Borough,  Letter  I. 

The  picture  of  the  shipwreck  at  night  in  the  First 
Letter  of  The  Borough  is  sublime  : — 

From  parted  clouds  the  moon  her  radiance  throws 
On  the  wild  waves,  and  all  the  dangers  shows, 
But  shows  them  beaming  in  her  shining  vest, 
Terrific  splendour !  gloom  in  glory  dress'd  ! 
This  for  a  moment,  and  then  clouds  again 
Hide  every  beam,  and  fear  and  darkness  reign. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  his  pictures  of  inland  scenes. 
Both  at  Muston  and  at  his  other  residences  in  Suffolk, 
particularly  at  Glemham  Hall,  where  he  lived  for 
nearly  five  years,  as  well  as  at  Trowbridge,  he  no  doubt 
found  the  archetypes  of  his  rural  pictures.  The  parson- 


248  POETS'  COUNTRY 

age  garden  at  Muston  be  describes  in  the  First  Letter 
of  TJie  Borough  : — 

Seek  then  thy  garden's  shrubby  bound,  and  look, 
As  it  steals  by,  upon  the  bordering  brook, 
That  winding  streamlet,  limpid,  lingering  slow, 
Where  the  reeds  whisper  when  the  zephyrs  blow ; 
Where  in  the  midst,  upon  a  throne  of  green, 
Sits  the  large  Lily  as  the  water's  queen, 
And  makes  the  current,  forc'd  awhile  to  stay, 
Murmur  and  bubble  as  it  shoots  away. 

It  would,  of  course,  be  impossible  to  localise  his  late 
autumn  landscape  in  The  Patron  (Tales,  V.) : — 

Cold  grew  the  foggy  morn,  the  day  was  brief, 

Loose  on  the  cherry  hung  the  crimson  leaf, 

The  dew  dwelt  ever  on  the  herb :  the  woods 

Roar'd  with  strong  blasts,  with  mighty  showers  the  floods. 

All  green  was  vanish'd  save  of  pine  and  yew, 

That  still  displayed  their  melancholy  hue, 

Save  the  green  holly  with  its  berries  red, 

And  the  green  moss  that  o'er  the  gravel  spread. 

But  there  are  touches  in  the  early  autumn  landscape 
— one  of  the  gems  of  the  Tales  of  the  Hall — which 
recall  the  parsonage  at  Muston  : — 

It  was  a  fair  and  mild  autumnal  sky, 

And  earth's  ripe  treasures  met  the  admiring  eye, 

As  a  rich  beauty,  when  her  bloom  is  lost, 

Appears  with  more  magnificence  and  cost : 

The  wet  and  heavy  grass,  where  feet  had  stray 'd, 

Not  yet  erect,  the  wanderer's  way  betray 'd ; 

Showers  of  the  night  had  swell'd  the  deep'ning  rill, 

The  morning  breeze  had  urg'd  the  quick'ning  mill ; 

Assembled  rooks  had  wing'd  their  seaward  flight, 

By  the  same  passage  to  return  at  night, 


CRABBE   AND    ALDBOROUGH         249 

While  proudly  o'er  them  hung  the  steady  kite, 
Then  turn'd  him  back,  and  left  the  noisy  throng, 
Nor  deign'd  to  know  them  as  he  sail'd  along. 
Long  yellow  leaves  from  oziers,  strew' d  around, 
Choked  the  small  stream,  and  hush'd  the  feeble  sound, 
While  the  dead  foliage  dropt  from  loftier  trees. 

Book  IV. 

In  Delay  has  Danger  (Tales  of  the  Hall,  Book 
XIII.)  we  have  another  early  morning  autumn  scene, 
represented  as  contemplated  by  a  man  who  has  wrecked 
his  life  by  a  foolish  marriage  : — 

Early  he  rose,  and  looked  with  many  a  sigh 
On  the  red  light  that  fill'd  the  eastern  sky. 

He  saw  the  wind  upon  the  water  blow, 
And  the  cold  stream  curl'd  onward  as  the  gale 
From  the  pine-hill  blew  harshly  down  the  dale ; 
On  the  right  side  the  youth  a  wood  survey 'd, 
With  all  its  dark  intensity  of  shade. 

Far  to  the  left  he  saw  the  huts  of  men 
Half  hid  in  mist  that  hung  upon  the  fen ; 
Before  him  swallows,  gathering  for  the  sea, 
Took  their  short  flights,  and  twitter'd  on  the  lea ; 
And  near  the  bean-sheaf  stood,  the  harvest  done, 
And  slowly  blacken'd  in  the  sickly  sun. 

Once  more : — 

There  was  a  day,  ere  yet  the  Autumn  closed, 
When,  ere  her  wintry  wars,  the  Earth  reposed ; 
When  from  the  yellow  weed  the  feathery  crownj 
Light  as  the  curling  smoke,  fell  slowly  down  • 
When  the  wing'd  insect  settled  in  our  sight 
And  waited  wind  to  recommence  her  flight ; 
When  the  wide  river  was  a  silver  sheet, 
And  on  the  Ocean  slept  th'  unanchor'd  fleet. 


250  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Perhaps  the  most  charming  of  his  inland  pictures  is 
that  of  the  surroundings  of  the  Ancient  Mansion  in  the 
Posthumous  Tales,  and  difficult  indeed  would  it  be  to 
find  its  equal  in  minutely  accurate  particularity : — 

How  stately  stand  yon  pines  upon  the  hill, 
How  soft  the  murmurs  of  that  living  rill ! 
And  o'er  the  park's  tall  paling,  scarcely  higher, 
Peeps  the  low  Church  and  shows  the  modest  spire. 
Unnumber'd  violets  on  those  banks  appear, 
And  all  the  first-born  beauties  of  the  year. 
The  grey-green  blossoms  of  the  willows  bring 
The  large  wild  bees  upon  the  labouring  wing  ; 
Then  comes  the  Summer  with  augmented  pride, 
Whose  pure  small  streams  along  the  valleys  glide : 
Her  richer  Flora  their  brief  charms  display, 
And,  as  the  fruit  advances,  fall  away. 
Then  shall  th'  autumnal  yellow  clothe  the  leaf, 
What  time  the  reaper  binds  the  burden' d  sheaf: 
Then  silent  groves  denote  the  dying  year, 
The  morning  frost,  and  noontide  gossamer ; 
And  all  be  silent  in  the  scene  around, 
All  save  the  distant  sea's  uncertain  sound, 
Or  here  and  there  the  gun  whose  loud  report 
Proclaims  to  man  that  Death  is  but  his  sport. 
And  then  the  wintry  winds  begin  to  blow, 
Then  fall  the  flaky  stars  of  gathering  snow, 
When  on  the  thorn  the  ripening  sloe,  yet  blue, 
Takes  the  bright  varnish  of  the  morning  dew  ; 
The  aged  moss  grows  brittle  on  the  pale, 
The  dry  boughs  splinter  in  the  windy  gale, 
And  every  changing  season  of  the  year 
Stamps  on  the  scene  its  English  character. 

Crabbe's  range  as  a  Nature-painter  is,  it  will  be  seen, 
a  restricted  one,  being,  indeed,  confined  to  his  surround- 
ings, practically,  indeed,  confined  to  Aldborough  and 


CRABBE   AND   ALDBOROUGH        251 

to  Suffolkshire.  Its  characteristic  is  its  minute  and 
faithful  realism,  unillumined  by  a  ray  of  imagination 
or  of  fancy.  The  beautiful  appears  to  have  had  little 
attraction  for  him.  As  in  delineating  human  life  and 
character  he  dwelt  chiefly  on  the  seamy  side  of  both, 
on  squalor,  on  ugliness,  on  infirmity,  regarding  and 
painting  them  as  Hogarth  did,  so  in  the  spirit  of  the 
same  unlovely  and  ruthless  realism,  and  with  the  same 
indifference  to  mere  charm  and  beauty,  he  dealt  with 
Nature.  The  object  of  The  Village  was  to  confront 
fiction  with  truth,  to 

Paint  the  cot 
As  truth  will  paint  it,  and  as  bards  will  not. 

What  beauty  his  descriptions  have  is  the  beauty 
they  derive  from  truth,  the  beauty  which  is  in  the 
objects  themselves,  not  the  beauty  with  which  their 
painter  has  invested  them.  When  he  chose  a  theme 
like  the  sea  and  such  landscapes  as  he  has  given  us,  he 
chose  objects  in  themselves  supremely  beautiful,  but  he 
drew  them  just  as  he  drew  what  was  most  sordid  and 
unlovely.  It  has  been  questioned  whether  he  can  be 
called  a  poet,  clinging  as  he  did 

Too  close  to  life's  realities, 
In  truth  to  nature  missing  truth  to  art. 

It  may  be  answered  that  in  the  house  of  poetry  there 
are  many  mansions,  and  that  a  definition  of  poetry 
which  shall  exclude  from  it  such  Nature-painting  as 


252  POETS'  COUNTRY 

has  been  here  illustrated  would  certainly  have  to  be 
amended. 

The  effect  of  Crabbe's  descriptive  poetry  is  seriously 
impaired  by  its  form,  which  was  not  happily  chosen, 
failing  as  it  does  in  plasticity,  and,  to  employ  a  phrase 
of  Longinus,  "  hanging  "  what  it  presents  "  with  bells." 


TENNYSON 

WHATEVER  may  be  Tennyson's  limitations,  and  what- 
ever deduction  advancing  time  may  make  from  his 
enormous  reputation  among  his  contemporaries,  of  one 
thing  there  can  be  no  doubt,  that  as  a  Nature-painter 
he  is  the  most  finished  artist  in  English  poetry,  and, 
within  his  range,  without  a  superior  in  the  poetry  of  the 
world.  But  his  range  is  limited.  He  has  not  the 
breadth  and  sweep  of  Wordsworth,  or  the  rich  com- 
plexity of  Shelley ;  he  has  nothing,  for  example,  that 
can  compare  with  the  landscapes  in  The  Excursion,  or 
the  affluent  picturesqueness  which  we  find  in  Alastor, 
in  The  Revolt  of  Islam,  or  in  the  Lines  written  among 
the  Euganean  Hills.  With  one  or  two  rare  exceptions, 
he  paints  in  miniature,  his  descriptions  have  the  effect 
of  exquisitely  finished  cameos.  It  is  well  known  that 
he  made  this  branch  of  poetry  a  speciality,  going  about 
with  a  notebook  in  his  hand,  and  on  the  very  spot  fixing 
the  features  of  any  scene  which  impressed  him,  studying 
Nature  indeed  not  merely  with  the  eye  of  an  artist,  but  as 
a  botanist,  a  zoologist,  a  geologist  studies  her.  As  his 

253 


254  POETS'  COUNTRY 

diction,  like  that  of  Milton  and  Gray,  resembles  mosaic 
work  dovetailed  out  of  felicities  borrowed  and  assimi- 
lated from  the  Classics  of  all  ages,  so  his  imagery  and 
Nature-pictures  were  simple  transcripts  of  what  a  sleep- 
less observation  directed  systematically  to  the  enrich- 
ment of  his  poetry  had  supplied  him  with.  It  is 
certainly  a  little  disenchanting  to  find  a  poet  so  deliber- 
ately making  capital  as  it  were  out  of  Nature,  and  at 
times  our  consciousness  that  this  is  indeed  the  case 
seriously  interferes  with  our  enjoyment.  These  descrip- 
tions are  sometimes  not  duly  subordinated  to  the  context 
in  which  they  appear,  and  have  too  much  the  appearance 
of  mere  display ;  they  are  sometimes,  we  cannot  but 
feel,  over -elaborated,  which  has  instantly  the  effect 
of  falsetto.  In  general,  however,  their  effect  is  very 
different.  Of  all  poets  in  our  language  Tennyson  has 
most  of  that  natural  magic  of  which  Arnold  speaks, 
that  power  of  catching  and  rendering  the  charm 
and  power  of  Nature  with  wonderful  nearness  and 
vividness. 

But  my  business  here  is  not  to  criticise  but  to 
illustrate ;  it  is  to  point  out  the  originals  of  his  descrip- 
tions, and  this  in  his  case  is  not  difficult.  Tennyson, 
like  so  many  other  descriptive  poets,  drew  directly  from 
his  surroundings,  and  his  successive  residences  at 
Somersby  in  Lincolnshire,  at  Farringford  in  the  Isle 
of  Wight,  and  at  Aldworth  in  Surrey  can  be  distinctly 
traced  in  his  poetry.  If  to  these  be  added  his  tours 
about  England  and  Wales  and  his  tours  on  the 


TENNYSON  255 

Continent,  almost  every  elaborate  Nature -pain  ting  in 
his  work  except  his  tropical  studies  can  be  traced  to  its 
source. 

Far  more  intimately  and  extensively  than  any  other 
place  with  which  he  was  associated  was  he  affected  by 
the  country  of  his  birth,  by  Somersby  and  its  neigh- 
bourhood, where  he  first  saw  the  light,  by  Mablethorpe, 
where  he  first  looked  on  the  sea.  Indeed,  these  places 
and  Lincolnshire  generally  are  to  his  poetry,  and  to  his 
best  poetry,  the  poems  of  1842  and  In  Memoriam,  all 
that  Stoke  Pogis  was  to  Gray,  Olney  and  Weston  to 
Cowper,  and  Aldborough  to  Crabbe.  He  was  born,  as 
every  one  knows,  at  the  parsonage  at  Somersby,  where 
his  father  was  rector.  The  rectory  garden  is  described 
in  the  Ode  to  Memory  : — 

A  garden  bower'd  close 
With  plaited  alleys  of  the  trailing  rose, 
Long  alleys  falling  down  to  twilight  grots, 
Or  opening  upon  level  plots 
Of  crowned  lilies,  standing  near 
Purple-spiked  lavender. 

Again  more  fully  in  A  Song : — 

A  spirit  haunts  the  year's  last  hours ; 

and  still  more  charmingly  in  the  hundred  and  first 
section  of  In  Memoriam  : — 

Unwatch'd,  the  garden  bough  shall  sway, 
The  tender  blossom  flutter  down, 
Unloved,  that  beech  will  gather  brown, 

This  maple  burn  itself  away  ; 


256  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Unloved,  the  sun-flower,  shining  fair, 

Ray  round  with  flames  her  disk  of  seed, 
And  many  a  rose-carnation  feed 

With  summer-spice  the  humming  air. 

The  lawn  was  overshadowed  on  one  side  by  witch- 
elms,  and  on  the  other  by  larch  and  sycamore  trees, 
described  in  the  eighty-ninth  section  of  In  Memoriam  : — 

Witch-elms  that  counterchange  the  floor 

Of  this  flat  lawn  with  dusk  and  bright ; 
And  thou,  with  all  thy  breadth  and  height 

Of  foliage,  towering  sycamore  ; 

and  again  at  the  end  of  the  ninety-fifth  section. 

The  scene  from  the  garden  and  in  its  neighbourhood 
is  photographed  in  the  Ode  to  Memory  : — 

The  woods  that  belt  the  gray  hill-side, 
The  seven  elms,  the  poplars  four1 
That  stand  beside  my  father's  door, 
And  chiefly  from  the  brook  that  loves 
To  purl  o'er  matted  cress  and  ribbed  sand, 
Or  dimple  in  the  dark  of  rushy  coves, 
Drawing  into  his  narrow  earthen  urn, 

In  every  elbow  and  turn, 
The  filter'd  tribute  of  the  rough  woodland. 

This  brook,  the  Somersby  brook,  originating  in  the 
springs  past  Tetford,  seems  to  haunt  Tennyson's  poetry, 
appearing  and  reappearing  in  it  as  in  The  Brook,  in 
A  Farewell,  which  was  dedicated  to  it,  in  The  Miller  s 
Daughter,  and  in  the  seventy -ninth,  ninety -ninth, 

1  The  poplars  have  disappeared,  but  the  seven  elms  are  still  to  be  seeu  in 
the  garden  behind  the  house  ;  the  only  other  change  is  that  trees  now  obscure 
the  view  from  the  garden. 


ST.   JOHN'S   COLLEGE,   CAMBRIDGE 

Of  Cambridge  Tennyson  writes — 

I  past  beside  the  reverend  walls 

In  which  of  old  I  wore  the  gown  ; 
I  roved  at  random  thro'  the  town, 

And  saw  the  tumult  of  the  halls. 

Many  of  the  colleges  are  grouped  along  the  river.     This 
is  St.  John's. 


TENNYSON  257 

hundredth,  and  hundred  and  first  sections  of  In 
Memoriam.  It  has  a  sandy  bottom,  "where,"  as  the 
late  Mr.  Rawnsley,  Tennyson's  friend,  said,  "shoals  of 
small  fish  delight  to  disport  themselves."  There  can  be 
little  doubt  that  what  Tennyson  saw  here  suggested 
the  simile  in  Geraint  and  Enid : — 

Like  a  shoal 

Of  darting  fish,  that  on  a  summer  morn 
Adown  the  crystal  dykes  at  Camelot 
Come  slipping  o'er  their  shadows  on  the  sand, 
But  if  a  man  who  stands  upon  the  brink 
But  lift  a  shining  hand  against  the  sun, 
There  is  not  left  the  twinkle  of  a  fin 
Betwixt  the  cressy  islets  white  in  flower. 

Near  Somersby  the  brook  joins  another  from  Holy- 
well,  as  is  described  in 

By  that  old  bridge  which,  half  in  ruins  then, 
Still  makes  a  hoary  eyebrow  for  the  gleam 
Beyond  it,  where  the  waters  marry. 

Close  to  the  rectory,  and  divided  from  it  by  a  row 
of  trees,  stands  Baumber's  Farm,  which  appears  to  have 
suggested  at  least  some  touches  for  Mariana  in  the 
Moated  Grange.  At  Mablethorpe  we  are  brought 
even  nearer  to  his  poetry.  Here  his  father  took  a 
cottage  in  the  summer-time,  close  under  the  sea-bank, 
"  the  long  low  line  of  tussocked  dunes,"  to  which,  says 
the  present  Lord  Tennyson,  the  family  resorted.  Here 
Tennyson  made  his  first  acquaintance  with  the  sea. 
To  this  cottage  there  is  a  reference  in  the  Ode  to 
Memory : — 


258  POETS'  COUNTRY 

A  lowly  cottage  whence  we  see 
Stretch'd  wide  and  wild  the  waste  enormous  marsh, 
Where  from  the  frequent  bridge, 
Like  emblems  of  infinity, 
The  trenched  waters  run  from  sky  to  sky. 

He  used  to  stand,  we  are  told,  on  the  sand-built  ridge 
and  think  that  "  it  was  the  spine-bone  of  the  world." 
"From  the  top  of  this,"  says  his  son,  "the  weird 
strangeness  of  the  place  greatly  moved  him."  On  the 
other  side  of  the  bank  there  is  an  immense  waste 
of  sand  and  clay.  At  night  on  the  shore,  when  the 
tide  is  full,  the  sound  is  amazing.  As  the  shore  is 
perfectly  flat,  the  clap  of  the  wave  can  be  heard  for 
miles.  This  furnished  him  many  years  later  with  one 
of  the  most  vivid  of  his  similes  : — 

As  the  crest  of  some  slow-arching  wave 
Heard  in  dead  night  along  that  table-shore, 
Drops  flat,  and  after  the  great  waters  break 
Whitening  for  half  a  league,  and  thin  themselves 
Far  over  sands  marbled  with  moon  and  cloud, 
From  less  and  less  to  nothing. 

So,  too,  in  The  Palace  of  Art : — 

A  still  salt  pool,  lock'd  in  with  bars  of  sand, 
Left  on  the  shore ;  that  hears  all  night 

The  plunging  seas  draw  backward  from  the  land 
Their  moon-led  waters  white. 

Here,  too,  he  found 

The  sandy  tracts, 
And  the  hollow  ridges  roaring  into  cataracts, 

the  original,  probably,  for  the  "  Lover's  bay  "  described 
in  The  Lovers  Tale. 


TENNYSON  259 

Returning     inland,     we     have     the     characteristic 
Lincolnshire  landscape  in  The  May  Queen, 

The  long  gray  fields  at  night ; 

When  from  the  dry  dark  wold  the  summer  airs  blow  cool 
On  the  oat-grass  and  the  sword-grass,  and  the  bulrush  in  the  pool. 

As  Fitzgerald  says,  "  the  May  Queen  is  all  Lincolnshire 
inland,  as  Locksley  Hall  its  sea-board."  We  have  only 
to  climb  the  hill  which  the  poet  climbs  in  the  hundredth 
section  of  In  Memoriam  to  understand  the  truth  of  his 
local  pictures  :  the 

yonder  cloud 

That  rises  upward  always  higher, 

And  onward  drags  a  labouring  breast, 
And  topples  round  the  dreary  west, 

A  looming  bastion  fringed  with  fire  ; 

and 

yon  great  plain 

That  sweeps  with  all  its  autumn  bowers 
And  crowded  farms  and  lessening  towers 
To  mingle  with  the  bounding  main  ; 

and  the 

gray  old  grange,  or  lonely  fold, 
Or  low  morass  and  whispering  reed, 
Or  simple  stile  from  mead  to  mead, 
Or  sheepwalk  up  the  windy  wold ; 

the 

hoary  knoll  of  ash  and  haw 
That  hears  the  latest  linnet  trill, 
Nor  quarry  trench'd  along  the  hill 
And  haunted  by  the  wrangling  daw. 

In  The  Dying  Swan  we  have  a  photograph  from  the 
marshes,  just  as  in  The  Last  Tournament  we  have  one 


260  POETS'  COUNTRY 

of  his  most  majestic  pictures  of  a  scene  which  he  must 
often  have  witnessed  : — 

O'er  the  illimitable  reed 
And  many  a  glancing  plash  and  sallowy  isle 
The  wide- wing' d  sunset  of  the  misty  marsh 
Glared. 

About  a  furlong  beyond  Somersby  Church  is  a 
small  plantation,  Holy  well  Glen.  This  was  a  favourite 
haunt  of  Tennyson's ;  it  was  here  on  the  day  that  he 
heard  of  Byron's  death  that  he  carved  on  a  rock  the 
words,  "Byron  is  dead."  "As  far  as  the  sight  can 
penetrate,"  I  quote  Mr.  Cuming  Walter's  graphic 
picture  of  it,  "are  trees — larch  and  spruce  and  ash 
and  beech  and  sycamore — and  the  great  hollow  is 
strewn  with  leaves.  The  interlacing  branches  above 
breaking  out  into  verdure,  make  a  roof  of  twinkling 
emerald,  but  down  in  the  hollow  there  is  a  shadowy 
gloom.  In  the  gorge  a  thin  stream  glistens.  It  issues 
from  the  throat  of  a  cavern  of  rocks,  its  shallow  bed 
is  half  choked  with  rotting  herbage  and  is  crossed  again 
and  again  by  fallen  and  inclining  trees.  .  .  .  Here  and 
there  a  bare  forehead  of  rock  stands  out  and  overlooks 
the  gorge  with  nothing,  perhaps,  but  a  twisted  root, 
like  a  swollen  vein,  protruding  on  its  front." l  This  seems 
to  have  suggested  many  details  in  the  scenery  of  The 
Lovers  Tale,  written  when  Tennyson  was  still  at 
Somersby,  and  if  Mr.  Cuming  Walter  goes  too  far 
in  attributing  to  it  the  genesis  of  Maud,  there  can  be 

1  In  Tennyson  Land,  pp.  78,  79. 


TENNYSON  261 

little  doubt  that  there  are  many  reminiscences  of  it 
in  that  poem.  Here,  at  all  events,  began  Tennyson's 
familiarity  with  the  "  silent  woody  places  "  which,  with 
their  various  phenomena,  fill  so  wide  a  space  in  his 
Nature-paintings. 

Though  he  said  himself  that  if  the  scenery  of  The 
Miller's  Daughter  was  suggested  by  any  particular 
place  it  was  the  mill  at  Trumpington  near  Cambridge, 
it  is  difficult  not  to  think  that  it  must  have  owed  many 
touches  to  the  mill  near  his  home,  Stockworth  Mill. 
As  Mr.  Cuming  Walter  has  pointed  out, 

The  white  chalk-quarry  from  the  hill 
Gleamed  to  the  flying  moon  by  fits, 

seems  plainly  to  refer  to  the  white  chalk -quarry  at 
Thetford,  which  can  be  seen  from  Stockworth  Mill. 
But  the  matter  is  a  trifle. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  extend  these  illustrations  of 
the  effect  of  Lincolnshire  scenery  on  Tennyson's  poetry 
further,  and  we  may  now  pass  to  Farringford,  to  which 
he  removed  from  Twickenham  at  the  end  of  1853,  and 
where  in  the  following  year  he  wrote  Maud.  His 
description  of  it,  "close  to  the  ridge  of  a  noble 
down,"  and  of  the  prospect  in  his  Invitation  to 
Maurice  is  well  known  : — 

Groves  of  pine  on  either  hand, 
To  break  the  blast  of  winter,  stand  ; 
And  further  on,  the  hoary  Channel 
Tumbles  a  billow  on  chalk  and  sand ; 


262  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Where,  if  below  the  milky  steep 
Some  ship  of  battle  slowly  creep. 

And  on  thro'  zones  of  light  and  shadow 
Glimmer  away  to  the  lonely  deep. 

Tennyson  himself  in  some  notes  on  Maud  printed 
in  the  Biography  by  his  son,  says  that  "many  of  the 
descriptions  of  nature  are  taken  from  observations  of 
natural  phenomena  at  Farringford."  No  one,  indeed, 
can  take  a  walk  along  the  Downs  from  Watcombe  Bay 
by  the  Beacon  towards  the  promontory  over  the 
Needles  without  recalling  innumerable  passages  which 
were  plainly  suggested  from  what  meets  the  view,  and, 
we  may  add,  strikes  the  ear ;  such  as  : — 

Listening  now  to  the  tide  in  its  broad-flung  shipwrecking  roar, 
Now  to  the  scream  of  a  madden'd  beach  dragg'd  down  by  the  wave, 

which,  however,  seems  to  have  been  more  immediately 
suggested  by  the  breakers  on  the  shore  of  Shole  Bay, 

Is  that  enchanted  moan  only  the  swell 
Of  the  long  waves  that  roll  in  yonder  bay  ? 

When  the  far-off  sail  is  blown  by  the  breeze  of  a  softer  clime, 
Half-lost  in  the  liquid  azure  bloom  of  a  crescent  of  sea. 

This  too,  in  Sea  Dreams,  as  his  son  remarks,  was  a 
picture  sketched  from  what  he  here  saw  : — 

A  full  tide 

Rose  with  ground-swell,  which,  on  the  foremost  rocks 
Touching,  upjetted  in  spirts  of  wild  sea-smoke, 
And  scaled  in  sheets  of  wasteful  foam,  and  fell 
In  vast  sea-cataracts — ever  and  anon 
Dead  claps  of  thunder  from  within  the  cliffs 
Heard  thro'  the  living  roar. 


TENNYSON  263 

In  the  Prologue  to  The  Charge  of  the  Heavy 
Brigade  there  is  a  description  of  an  autumn  scene  from 
Aldworth  : — 

Our  birches  yellowing  and  from  each 

The  light  leaf  falling  fast, 
While  squirrels  from  our  fiery  beech 

Were  bearing  off  the  mast. 
You  came,  and  look'd  and  loved  the  view 

Long-known  and  loved  by  me, 
Green  Sussex  fading  into  blue 
With  one  gray  glimpse  of  sea. 

It  may  be  well  now  to  give  a  few  illustrations  of 
scenes  and  pictures  suggested  by  other  places. 

From  one  of  his  own  notes  we  learn  that  the 
beautiful  picture  which  concludes  Audley  Court  was 
drawn  from  what  he  saw  when  coming  down  the  hill 
over  Torquay : — 

But  ere  the  night  we  rose 

And  sauntered  home  beneath  a  moon,  that,  just 
In  crescent,  dimly  rain'd  about  the  leaf 
Twilights  of  airy  silver,  till  we  reach' d 
The  limit  of  the  hills  :  and  as  we  sank 
From  rock  to  rock  upon  the  glooming  quay, 
The  town  was  hush'd  beneath  us :  lower  down 
The  bay  was  oily  calm :  the  harbour-buoy, 
Sole  star  of  phosphorescence  in  the  calm, 
With  one  green  sparkle  ever  and  anon 
Dipt  by  itself; 

and  the  same  scene  suggested  to  him  the  line  in  T/te 
Princess, 

A  full  sea  glazed  with  muffled  moonlight. 

A  fine  tree  in  the  Lac  de  Gaube,  standing  in  midstream 


264  POETS'  COUNTRY 

between  two  cataracts,  gave  him  the  picture  in  The 
Princess : — 

And  standing  like  a  stately  Pine 
Set  in  a  cataract  on  an  island-crag, 
When  storm  is  on  the  heights,  and  right  and  left 
Suck'd  from  the  dark  heart  of  the  long  hills  roll 
The  torrents  dash'd  to  the  vale. 

Another  fine  Nature-sketch  in  the  same  poem  was,  he 
tells  us,  drawn  from  what  he  saw  when  ascending 
Snowdon : — 

As  one  who  climbs  a  peak  to  gaze 
O'er  land  and  main,  and  sees  a  great  black  cloud 
Drag  inward  from  the  deeps,  a  wall  of  night 
Blot  out  the  slope  of  sea  from  verge  to  shore, 
And  suck  the  blending  splendour  from  the  sand, 
And,  quenching  lake  by  lake  and  tarn  by  tarn, 
Expunge  the  world. 

This,  it  may  be  remarked,  bears  so  close  a  resemblance 
to  a  passage  in  the  Iliad  (iv.  275),  that  had  Tennyson 
not  asserted  that  it  was  the  result  of  his  own  observa- 
tion, we  should  have  taken  it  as  an  embroidered 
adaptation  from  Homer. 

We  learn,  too,  from  his  letter  diary  that  another 
little  sea-piece  equally  Homeric  was  the  record  of  what 
he  saw  from  the  cabin  door  during  a  tour  on  the  North 
Sea: — 

Bare,  as  a  wild  wave  in  the  wide  North-sea, 
Green-glimmering  toward  the  summit,  bears,  with  all 
Its  stormy  crests  that  smoke  against  the  skies, 
Down  on  a  bark,  and  overbears  the  bark 
And  him  that  helms  it. 


LINCOLNSHIRE   COAST,   MABLETHORPE 

The  present  Lord  Tennyson  writes  :  "  From  boyhood  my 
father  had  a  passion  for  the  sea,  and  especially  the  North 
Sea  in  wild  weather." 

As  the  crest  of  some  slow  arching  wave 
Heard  in  dead  night  along  that  table  shore. 

Or, 

Break,  break,  break, 

On  thy  cold  gray  stones,  O  sea  ! 


Or 


TENNYSON  265 

Another  fine  Nature-simile  in  Gercdnt  and  Enid  was 
suggested  by  what  he  saw  and  heard  at  Festiniog  : — 

For  as  one, 

That  listens  near  a  torrent  mountain-brook, 
All  thro'  the  crash  of  the  near  cataract  hears 
The  drumming  thunder  of  the  huger  fall 
At  distance. 

This  truth  to  nature  vitalises  and  gives  originality 
to  what  might  have  been  a  commonplace  adaptation  of 
part  of  the  machinery  of  the  ancient  Greek  and  Roman 
epic  poets  and  their  modern  imitators,  the  employment, 
that  is  to  say,  of  these  Nature  cameos  in  the  form  of 
similes.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  Tennyson  will 
have  any  successor  to  revive  them. 

One  of  his  most  finished  and  beautiful  cameos  is  the 
ruin  picture  in  The  Marriage  of  Geraint : — 

He  look'd  and  saw  that  all  was  ruinous. 

Here  stood  a  shatter'd  archway  plumed  with  fern  ; 

And  here  had  fall'n  a  great  part  of  a  tower, 

Whole,  like  a  crag  that  tumbles  from  a  cliff, 

And  like  a  crag  was  gay  with  wilding  flowers  : 

And  high  above  a  piece  of  turret  stair 

Worn  by  the  feet  that  now  were  silent,  wound 

Bare  to  the  sun,  and  monstrous  ivy-stems 

Claspt  the  gray  walls  with  hairy-fibred  arms, 

And  suck'd  the  joining  of  the  stones,  and  look'd 

A  knot,  beneath,  of  snakes,  aloft,  a  grove. 

This  was  written,  we  are  told,  at  Middleham  Castle ; 
whether  it  be  a  sketch  of  what  that  castle  actually 
presents  I  cannot  say ;  it  might  certainly — this  I  can 
say — have  been  transcribed  from  a  portion  of  the  ruins 
of  Conway  Castle.  In  this  description  we  may  pause  to 


266  POETS'  COUNTRY 

notice  we  have  an  illustration  of  Tennyson's  scrupulous 
exactness  in  detail,  an  exactness  which  extends  to  his 
treatment  of  all  natural  objects,  however  insignificant. 
Thus  of  flowers : 

The  foxglove  clusters  dappled  bells. 

More  crumpled  than  a  poppy  from  the  sheath. 

Thus  of  the  sunflower  : 

Rays  round  with  flames  its  disk  of  seed 

Thus  of  the  dog-rose  : 

Tufts  of  rosy-tinted  snow. 
Again  : 

Pure  as  lines  of  green  that  streak  the  white 
Of  the  first  snowdrop's  inner  leaves. 

Wan-sallow  as  the  plant  that  feeds  itself 
Root-bitten  by  white  lichen. 

In  gloss  and  hue  the  chestnut  when  the  shell 
Divides  three-fold  to  show  the  fruit  within. 

So  of  trees : 

When  rosy  plumelets  tuft  the  larch. 

Delays,  as  the  tender  ash  delays, 
To  clothe  herself  when  all  the  woods  are  green. 

A  million  emeralds  break  from  the  ruby-budded  lime. 

Like  a  purple  beech  among  the  greens 
Looks  out  of  place. 

That  beech  will  gather  brown, 
This  maple  burn  itself  away. 

Or  of  curious  vegetable  anomalies  : 


TENNYSON  267 

A  stump  of  oak  half-dead, 

From  roots  like  some  black  coil  of  carven  snakes, 
Clutch'd  at  the  crag,  and  started  thro'  mid-air 
Bearing  an  eagle's  nest. 

So  of  insects : 

And  flash'd  as  those 

Dull-coated  things,  that  making  slide  apart 
Their  dusk  wing-cases,  all  beneath  there  burns 
A  jewell'd  harness,  ere  they  pass  and  fly. 

And  wheel' d  or  lit  the  filmy  shapes 
That  haunt  the  dusk,  with  ermine  capes 
And  woolly  breasts  and  beaded  eyes. 

So  of  fish : 

Like  a  shoal  of  darting  fish  that  on  a  summer  morn 
Come  slipping  o'er  their  shadows  on  the  sand. 

The  minnows  everywhere 
In  crystal  eddies  glance  and  poise. 

Of  agates : 

As  bottom  agates  seem  to  wave  and  float 
In  crystal  currents  of  clear  morning  seas. 

The  same  studiously  alert  observation  led  him  to 
note  the  various  effects  produced  by  distance,  move- 
ment, or  light  or  shade  on  natural  objects.  So  of  the 
sea  from  an  immense  height : 

The  wrinkled  sea  beneath  him  crawls. 

Of  a  waterfall  at  a  distance  : 

And  like  a  downward  smoke  the  slender  stream 
Along  the  cliff  to  fall  and  pause  and  fall  did  seem. 

Or  of  water  falling  high  up  a  mountain  : 

Their  thousand  wreaths  of  dangling  water-smoke. 


268  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Or  of  the  effect  of  the  sun  on  bracken  as  the  eye  at 
sunset  runs  along  the  level  of  the  fern  : 

It  seemed  to  Pelleas  that  the  fern  without 
Burnt  as  a  living  fire  of  emeralds. 

Pelleas  and  Ettarre. 

Or  of  a  procession  passing  under  leafy  shade  when  the 
sun  is  shining : 

And  over  them  the  tremulous  isles  of  light 
Slided,  they  moving  under  shade. 

Princess,  vi. 

But  it  is  not  necessary  to  multiply  these.  Tenny- 
son's range  and  power  as  a  Nature-painter  would  perhaps 
be  best  illustrated  comprehensively  by  placing  together 
what  are  perhaps  his  two  most  elaborate  pictures, 
each  far  removed  in  character  from  the  other.  Let 
us  begin  with  the  charming  scene  in  The  Gardeners 
Daughter : — 

Not  wholly  in  the  busy  world,  nor  quite 
Beyond  it,  blooms  the  garden  that  I  love. 
News  from  the  humming  city  comes  to  it 
In  sound  of  funeral  or  of  marriage  bells  ; 
And,  sitting  muffled  in  dark  leaves,  you  hear 
The  windy  clanging  of  the  minster  clock ; 
Although  between  it  and  the  garden  lies 
A  league  of  grass,  wash'd  by  a  slow  broad  stream, 
That,  stirr'd  with  languid  pulses  of  the  oar, 
Waves  all  its  lazy  lilies,  and  creeps  on, 
Barge-laden,  to  three  arches  of  a  bridge 
Crown'd  with  the  minster  towers. 

The  fields  between 

Are  dewy-fresh,  browsed  by  deep-udder'd  kine, 
And  all  about  the  large  lime  feathers  low, 
The  lime  a  summer  home  of  murmurous  wings. 


TENNYSON  269 

Compare  with   this    the    tropical   scene  in   Enoch 

Arden : — 

The  mountain  wooded  to  the  peak,  the  lawns 
And  winding  glades  high  up  like  ways  to  Heaven, 
The  slender  coco's  drooping  crown  of  plumes, 
The  lightning  flash  of  insect  and  of  bird, 
The  lustre  of  the  long  convolvuluses 
That  coil'd  around  the  stately  stems,  and  ran 
Ev'n  to  the  limit  of  the  land,  the  glows 
And  glories  of  the  broad  belt  of  the  world, 
All  these  he  saw ;  but  what  he  fain  had  seen 
He  could  not  see,  the  kindly  human  face, 
Nor  ever  hear  a  kindly  voice,  but  heard 
The  myriad  shriek  of  wheeling  ocean-fowl, 
The  league-long  roller  thundering  on  the  reef, 
The  moving  whisper  of  huge  trees  that  branch' d 
And  blossom'd  in  the  zenith,  or  the  sweep 
Of  some  precipitous  rivulet  to  the  wave, 
As  down  the  shore  he  ranged,  or  all  day  long 
Sat  often  in  the  seaward-gazing  gorge, 
A  shipwreck'd  sailor  waiting  for  a  sail  : 
No  sail  from  day  to  day,  but  every  day 
The  sunrise  broken  into  scarlet  shafts 
Among  the  palms  and  ferns  and  precipices ; 
The  blaze  upon  the  waters  to  the  east ; 
The  blaze  upon  his  island  overhead ; 
The  blaze  upon  the  waters  to  the  west ; 
Then  the  great  stars  that  globed  themselves  in  Heaven, 
The  hollower-bellowing  ocean,  and  again 
The  scarlet  shafts  of  sunrise — but  no  sail. 

We  may  fairly  doubt  whether  in  descriptive  poetry 
this  was  ever  equalled.  It  is  obviously  laboured  in 
each  detail,  and  yet  nothing  is  in  singularity,  there  is 
not  a  touch  in  it  which  does  not  exact,  and  exact 
importunately,  its  separate  tribute  of  admiration,  and 


270  POETS'  COUNTRY 

yet  each  blends  harmoniously  in  contributing  to  the 
effect  of  the  whole. 

Some  of  his  most  magical  effects  are  produced  by 
the  simplest  means  ;  we  may  instance  : — 

When  summer's  hourly-mellowing  change 
May  breathe,  with  many  roses  sweet, 
Upon  the  thousand  waves  of  wheat, 

That  ripple  round  the  lonely  grange. 
Q_  In  Memoriam,  xci. 

Move  eastward,  happy  earth,  and  leave 

Yon  orange  sunset  waning  slow  : 
From  fringes  of  the  faded  eve, 

O,  happy  planet,  eastward  go  ; 
Till  over  thy  dark  shoulder  glow 

Thy  silver  sister- world. 
r\T  Fragment. 

There  all  in  spaces  rosy-bright, 

Large  Hesper  glitter' d  on  her  tears, 
And  deepening  thro'  the  silent  spheres 

Heaven  over  Heaven  rose  the  night. 

Mariana  in  the  South. 

The  ninety-fifth  section  of  In  Memoriam  is  not 
merely  among  the  gems,  but  among  the  miracles  of 
description. 

A  striking  characteristic  of  his  descriptive  poetry  is 
that  it  is  never  diffuse  and  never  commonplace.  He 
seizes  at  once  what  is  distinctive  and  essentially  signifi- 
cant, catches  and  fixes  it ;  his  very  epithets  are  pictures. 
The  "dewy  tassell'd  wood,"  "the  crimson-circled  star," 
"  lean-headed  eagles,"  "dry-tongu'd  laurels,"  the  "tender- 
pencill'd  shadows,"  "  ruby-budded  limes,"  "  sallow-rifted 


TENNYSON  271 

glooms,"  "  wide-wing'd  sunset,"  "  the  beard-blown  goat," 
and  the  like.  But  nothing  contributes  so  much  to  the 
effect  of  his  description  as  his  use  of  onomatopoeia,  or 
the  art  of  making  the  sound  echo  the  sense,  of  which 
he  is  the  greatest  master  in  our  language  since  Milton. 
A  few  examples  must  suffice  : — 

The  wavy  swell  of  the  soughing  reeds. 

The  sweep  of  scythe  in  morning  dew. 

The  league-long  roller  thundering  on  the  reef. 

The  blasts  that  blow  the  poplar  white, 
And  lash  with  storm  the  streaming  pane. 

ghastly  through  the  drizzling  rain 
On  the  bald  street  breaks  the  blank  day. 

And  followed  up  by  a  hundred  airy  does, 
Steps  with  a  tender  foot,  light  as  on  air, 
The  lovely,  lordly  creature  floated  on. 

Or  let  us  take  a  whole  passage,  as,  for  example,  the 
"  Idyl "  in  The  Princess  :— 

Nor  cares  to  walk 

With  Death  and  Morning  on  the  silver  horns, 
Nor  wilt  thou  snare  him  in  the  white  ravine, 
Nor  find  him  dropt  upon  the  firths  of  ice, 
That  huddling  slant  in  furrow-cloven  falls 
To  roll  the  torrent  out  of  dusky  doors  : 
But  follow ;  let  the  torrent  dance  thee  down 
To  find  him  in  the  valley ;  let  the  wild 
Lean-headed  Eagles  yelp  alone,  and  leave 
The  monstrous  ledges  there  to  slope,  and  spill 
Their  thousand  wreaths  of  dangling  water-smoke, 
That  like  a  broken  purpose  waste  in  air. 


272  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Myriads  of  rivulets  hurrying  thro'  the  lawn, 
The  moan  of  doves  in  immemorial  elms, 
And  murmuring  of  innumerable  bees. 

Equally  wonderful  is  the  passage  already  quoted 
from  Enoch  Arden. 

Nor  must  we  take  our  leave  of  him  without  noticing 
another  characteristic  of  his  descriptive  poetry,  namely, 
its  elaborate  symbolism.  In  Maud  and  in  In  Memoriam 
particularly  he  makes  these  descriptions  reflect  symbolic- 
ally the  mood  or  psychological  state  of  the  person 
who  is  supposed  to  be  speaking.  The  most  striking 
example  of  this  is  in  Enoch  Arden,  where  a  description 
of  a  late  autumn  day,  while  exactly  and  vividly  true  to 
nature,  as  exactly  and  vividly  typifies  Enoch's  position  : — 

Bright  was  that  afternoon, 
Sunny  but  chill ;  till  drawn  thro'  either  chasm, 
Where  either  haven  open'd  on  the  deeps, 
Roll'd  a  sea-haze  and  whelm'd  the  world  in  gray ; 
Cut  off  the  length  of  highway  on  before, 
And  left  but  narrow  breadth  to  left  and  right 
Of  wither'd  holt  or  tilth  or  pasturage. 
On  the  nigh-naked  tree  the  robin  piped 
Disconsolate,  and  thro'  the  dripping  haze 
The  dead  weight  of  the  dead  leaf  bore  it  down : 

Last,  as  it  seemed,  a  great  mist-blotted  light 
Flared  on  him,  and  he  came  upon  the  place. 

It  is  so  with  the  opening  lines,  in  which  we  have 
symbolically  the  key  to  the  tragedy  : — 

Long  lines  of  cliff  breaking  have  left  a  chasm ; 
And  in  the  chasm  are  foam  and  yellow  sands. 

It  is  with  the  scene  of  Arthur's  last  battle  : — 


BLACKDOWN   COMMON 

From  Blackdowii  Common  near  Haslemere,  Aldworth, 
Tennyson's  Surrey  home,  can  be  seen  situated  in  the  trees. 
Beyond  is  Hindhead,  and  in  almost  every  direction  are 
stretches  of  delightful  country. 


TENNYSON  273 

A  land  of  old  upheaven  from  the  abyss 
By  fire,  to  sink  into  the  abyss  again ; 
Where  fragments  of  forgotten  peoples  dwelt, 
And  the  long  mountains  ended  in  a  coast 
Of  ever-shifting  sand,  and  far  away 
The  phantom  circle  of  a  moaning  sea. 

In  descriptive  poetry  in  its  relation  to  Nature-paint- 
ing, it  may  safely  be  said  that  from  nearly  every  point 
of  view  Tennyson  is  our  greatest  artist,  and  as  long  as 
the  world  he  paints,  or  at  least  as  long  as  our  language 
lasts,  he  is  never  likely  to  lose  his  charm  or,  perhaps, 
his  supremacy. 


CHAUCER  AT  ELTHAM 

THERE  is  no  more  difficult  historical  task  than  to  realise 
what  a  place  or  district  looked  like  at  a  given  period. 
In  London  and  its  neighbourhood  change  goes  on 
unchangeably.  In  distant  places,  the  Backwoods  of 
Canada  or  the  Australian  Bush,  for  example,  we  feel 
that  practically,  except  for  sudden  earthquakes  or  the 
slow  growth  of  giant  conifers,  what  the  forest  looked 
like  five  centuries  ago,  that  it  probably  looked  like  last 
week,  and  we  have  to  think  of  some  more  remote  epoch, 
before  Niagara  was  turned  over  the  cliff,  or  while  great 
lakes  irrigated  the  deserts.  Is  it  impossible  to  re- 
construct a  view  of  the  lower  Thames  as  it  was  in  the 
fourteenth  century,  when  Chaucer  sent  his  pilgrims — 
each  primed  with  his  story — to  ride  through  the  Garden 
of  England  from  the  Tabard  to  Harbledown  ?  Of  all 
the  places  through  which  they  passed,  of  all  the 
buildings  they  can  have  seen,  is  there  one  of  which 
we  can  say  with  certainty,  "Here  is  a  scene  which 
unquestionably  was  familiar  to  Geoffrey  Chaucer  "  ? 

The  pilgrims   set   out   from   Southwark.      London 
Bridge  brought  them  there.     Old  London   Bridge   is 

274 


CHAUCER  275 

gone  nearly  a  hundred  years.  It  brought  them  into 
High  Street,  and  there  must  have  been  some  gate  or 
bar  marking  where  Southwark,  the  fortification  protect- 
ing London  Bridge,  ended,  pointing  out  the  boundary 
of  the  City  Ward.  Mr.  Norman,  and  before  him  Mr. 
Rendle,  have  written  about  old  Southwark  and  its 
people,  but  they  tell  us  about  no  such  landmark.  The 
Tabard  was  not,  strictly  speaking,  in  Southwark  but  in 
St.  George's.  The  pilgrims  may  have  seen  what  is  now 
the  Cathedral,  but  the  parish  church  of  the  Tabard  was 
St.  George's.  There  is  a  church  of  that  dedication  close 
by,  as  there  was  in  Chaucer's  time,  but  the  present 
church,  old  as  it  is,  has  been  rebuilt  over  and  over  again, 
the  last  time  in  1733,  nearly  two  hundred  years  ago. 
It  is  the  same  with  the  Tabard.  Mr.  Rendle  caUs  it 
also  the  Circot,  Syrcote,  or,  as  we  should  say,  Surcoat, 
and  it  was  for  a  century  or  two  the  Talbot.  The 
building  is  changed  as  well  as  the  name,  and  we  may 
search  in  vain  for  anything  Chaucer  can  have  seen. 
For  years,  too,  all  this  district  was  connected  in  our 
minds  with  the  old  Marshalsea,  the  King's  Bench,  and 
the  gaol  at  the  end  of  Horsemonger  Lane,  where 
criminals,  or  at  least  the  victims  of  our  sanguinary 
penal  code,  were  put  to  death  every  month. 

There  is  nothing,  except  the  names,  to  tempt  a  poet 
to  linger  in  the  suburbs  of  Southwark.  A  modern 
breathing-space  for  school -children  has  been  called 
Little  Dorrit's  Playground,  but  the  nearest  thing  to  a 
poetical  memory  will  be  found  in  the  grave  of  Nahum 


276  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Tate,  joint-author  with  Brady  of  the  metrical  version  of 
the  Psalms. 

It  is  much  the  same  with  the  neighbourhood  as  we 
see  it  now  ;  and  it  can  have  been,  at  best,  only  suburban 
in  the  days  of  Chaucer.  The  Old  Kent  Road  is  most 
interesting  historically,  but  this  side  of  its  character 
may  best  be  studied,  perhaps,  on  a  large  scale  map. 
Whether,  as  some  think,  probably  with  reason,  it  is  an 
ancient  British  trackway  and  part  of  a  system  which 
would  connect  it  perhaps  with  Stonehenge,  or  whether 
it  was  made,  for  strategical  reasons,  by  the  Romans, 
may  be  a  question.  There  can  be  no  question  as  to  its 
intense  dulness  until  at  least  we  are  well  out  of  town. 
We  strike  what  is  still  the  country  at  Greenwich,  the 
park  of  which  is  artificially  rural,  but  it  is  not  till  we 
cross  the  hills  on  which  Greenwich  Observatory  is 
placed,  and  find  ourselves  looking  to  the  south  rather 
than  to  the  north,  into  Kent  rather  than  across  the 
Thames,  that  we  feel  the  open  fields  and  woods  are  at 
length  within  reach.  Here  the  Old  Dover  Road  rises, 
until  at  Shooters'  Hill  it  is  some  four  hundred  feet 
above  the  sea,  and  falls  again  rapidly  towards  the  south, 
with  woods  in  abundance,  and  some  signs  at  least  of  a 
state  of  things  which  may  have  extended  much  more 
widely  in  the  days  of  the  Canterbury  Pilgrims,  but 
marking  the  difference,  to  the  modern  seeker,  rather  as 
one  of  degree  than  of  kind. 

Here,  then,  we  come  upon  something  tangibly  of 
Chaucer's  time,  namely,  the  Palace  of  Eltham.     If  we 


CHAUCER  277 

try  to  form  a  clear  idea  of  Eltham  in  Chaucer's  life- 
time, the  materials  are  abundant.  The  place  was 
especially  favoured  by  those  of  our  kings  whose  names 
are  most  often  mentioned  in  histories  of  the  so-called 
Wars  of  the  Roses.  We  have  Froissart's  account  of 
his  sojourn  here,  under  Richard  II.  ;  and  there  is  no 
king  whose  costume  and  the  costume  of  whose  time 
are  so  well  known  to  us  by  contemporary  pictures  in 
illuminated  manuscripts.  The  famous  Bedford  Missal, 
which,  by  the  way,  is  not  a  missal  at  all  but  a  Book  of 
Hours,  was  written  in  this  reign,  as  well  as  the  very 
curious  account  of  the  doings  of  Richard  in  Ireland  and 
his  abdication  in  a  book,  now  in  the  British  Museum, 
which  has  been  copied  in  our  time  in  a  volume  (xx.)  of 
Archceologia.  In  addition  there  are  many  illustrated 
copies  of  Froissart's  Chronicles,  from  some  of  which  Mr. 
Newbolt  obtained  the  pictures  in  his  admirable  Froissart 
in  Britain,  published  in  1900.  Art  was  at  a  high  level 
in  those  days,  just  before  the  Hundred  Years'  War 
swept  everything  away,  architecture,  poetry,  painting, 
and  even  history  itself,  for  we  know  less  from  con- 
temporary chroniclers  of  the  reigns  of  Edward  IV.  and 
Richard  III.  than  we  do  of  Edward  III.  or  Richard  II. 
It  is  useless  to  speculate  as  to  what,  for  example, 
fourteenth-century  architecture  might  have  grown  into 
if  the  builders  of  the  next  age  had  not  been  forced  to 
turn  their  attention  and  use  their  unrivalled  building 
materials  on  fortification.  Castles,  especially  in  ruin, 
are  very  picturesque  now ;  but  if  the  men  who  built 


278  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Salisbury  Cathedral  or  Westminster  Hall  had  not  been 
obliged  to  crenellate  and  machicolate,  to  reckon  with 
gunpowder  and  cannon-balls,  what  might  they  not  have 
done  ? 

This  palace  of  Eltham,  on  the  green  southern  slopes, 
among  the  ancient  oaks,  with  its  golden  spires,  each 
catching  the  sunshine  with  a  different  heraldic  device, 
must  have  excited  the  admiration  of  a  poetical  mind. 
To  his  gorgeous  visions,  beautiful  as  this  appeared, 
something  far  more  beautiful  seemed  possible.  That, 
almost  from  the  day  of  Chaucer's  death,  for  a  whole 
century,  Englishmen  should  be  chiefly  engaged  in 
cutting  off  each  other's  heads,  that  all  the  arts  should 
be  at  a  standstill,  that  no  more  songs  should  be  sung, 
that  the  only  thing  which  flourished  would  be 
superstition,  and  the  only  people  who  prospered  would 
be  the  monks  and  friars  and  mass  priests,  though  even 
ecclesiastical  architecture  had  become  nothing  but 
ornament, — that  this  should  be  the  fate  of  the  land  he 
loved  so  well  can  scarcely  have  entered  his  mind.  It 
is,  however,  in  the  history  of  the  arts  of  peace  that  we 
can  best  judge  of  the  effect  of  the  Hundred  Years'  War 
in  England.  When  it  began,  an  event  which  we  may 
date  with  the  death  of  Richard  II.,  the  English  artists 
were  the  best  in  Europe,  only  those  parts  of  France  and 
Flanders  which  were  most  exposed  to  our  influence 
being  able  to  build  or  to  write  or  to  paint  like  English- 
men. When  the  fighting  ceased,  with  the  success  of  a 
usurper  in  no  way  entitled  to  the  prize  for  which  all 


CHAUCER  279 

this  blood  and  all  these  tears  had  been  poured  out, 
architecture  had  to  make  a  fresh  beginning,  painting 
had  ceased,  if  there  was  any  music  we  know  not  of  it, 
poetry  and  history  had  disappeared,  and  from  her 
supremacy  in  all  such  things  England  had  humbly  to 
learn,  even  from  Italy,  which  had  been  the  most 
backward  when  the  War  of  the  Roses  began.  Our 
painters  came  from  Germany  and  Switzerland,  our 
sculptors  from  Tuscany,  our  architects  from  Holland, 
and  the  fashion  of  looking  to  foreigners  set  in  and  can 
hardly  be  said  to  have  yet  ceased.  Between  Chaucer 
in  the  fourteenth  century  and  the  Elizabethans  in  the 
seventeenth  our  literary  and  poetical  history  is  a  blank. 
Cranmer,  although  he  seldom  secures  the  credit  which 
is  his  due,  restored  us  our  prose,  and,  so  far  as  we  know, 
invented  our  music,  but  there  is  no  one  else.  The 
supremacy  of  England  was  gone,  as  it  appeared,  for 
ever  till  Shakespeare  recalled  it. 

There  is  something  poetical  in  the  name  of  Eltham, 
"Alteham,"  as  it  is  called  in  Domesday  Book.  All 
nations  have  their  Altehams,  their  old  homes.  To  the 
Arab  dweller  by  the  arid  shores  of  the  Red  Sea  there 
was  one  place  sacred,  before  Mecca  had  been  heard  of, 
and  this  was  the  Old  Man's  Home  ;  the  star  which  rose 
over  it,  in  the  most  distant  regions,  in  Spain  or  on 
the  African  coast  of  the  Atlantic,  "Beyt  al  Agoos," 
reminded  him  whence  he  came  out.  The  English 
sailor  names  it  unwittingly  as  Betelgeuse  when  he 
makes  his  calculations ;  but  why  this  pleasant  village, 


280  POETS'  COUNTRY 

this  regal  residence  in  southern  England  should  have 
been  so  named  by  some  Anglo-Saxon  soldier,  thinking 
perhaps  that  it  resembled  the  village  by  .the  Elbe  or  the 
Rhine  where  dwelt  "the  old  folks  at  home,"  we  may 
never  know  now.  Certain  it  is  that  when  it  is  first 
described  for  us,  it  was  already  a  pleasant  place.  Even 
the  latest  editors  of  the  history  of  Kent  add  a  footnote 
to  express  this  feeling :  "  We  may  be  sure  that  the 
beautiful  country  beyond,  with  undulating  woodland  or 
forest,  abounding  in  game,  and  combining  the  pleasures 
of  the  chase  with  the  advantages  of  proximity  to  the 
capital  and  easy  access  by  river  or  land,  was  even  more 
attractive  to  our  Norman  forefathers  than  now,  when, 
shorn  of  its  pristine  beauties,  it  still  lures  the  opulent 
merchant  to  a  pleasant  retreat  from  the  turmoil  of  the 
city." 

Since  those  words  were  written,  Eltham  has  passed 
through  various  vicissitudes.  For  a  time  the  only 
remains  of  the  palace  of  Richard  II.  were  threatened 
with  removal.  They  were,  it  was  said,  to  be  trans- 
ported to  Windsor,  where  Wyatville  was  engaged  in 
making  a  stately  castle  out  of  another  ruin.  Better 
counsels  prevailed ;  yet  in  our  own  day  the  barn  within 
the  moat  seemed  likely  to  perish,  first,  for  want  of  a 
little  care,  and  afterwards  when  it  was  proposed  to 
"restore"  it.  The  "restoration,"  so  called,  of  old 
churches  and  cathedrals  was  in  full  swing  in  those 
days.  Few  escaped,  and  Eltham  only  because  nobody 
wanted  it.  Now,  at  last,  the  County  Council  is  said 


CHAUCER  281 

to  have  taken  charge,  and  it  is,  at  least  as  regards  the 
roof,  weather-tight.  It  is  certainly  a  pleasant  place  to 
visit,  a  place  where  we  may  try  to  reconstruct  the 
whole  palace  as  it  was  when  Chaucer  had  charge  of  it, 
and  when  Froissart  brought  his  poems  to  Richard  II. 

In  Mr.  Newbolt's  Froissart  in  Britain  we  have 
both  a  passage  from  Lord  Berners'  translation  of  the 
Chronicle  and  also  a  view  showing  three  or  four  knights 
and  gentlemen  riding  from  Leeds  to  Eltham.  It  will 
be  remembered  that  this  was  Leeds  Castle  near  Maid- 
stone  in  Kent,  so  called  from  its  being  situated  on  a 
"  leed  "  or  expansion  of  the  stream  of  the  little  Holing 
bourne  or  Hollingbourne,  a  brook  which,  like  the  Hole 
bourne  in  London,  made  its  previous  way  in  deeply 
cut  channels  and  high  banks.  Leaving  Leeds  and  its 
islands,  the  travellers  rode  among  the  meadows  and 
orchards  till,  after  a  pleasant  journey  of  some  five-and- 
twenty  miles,  they  came  in  sight  of  the  towers  and 
spires  of  Eltham  crowning  a  wooded  slope.  "When 
they  had  tarried  at  Leeds  a  four  days,"  we  are  told, 
"  the  King  returned  to  Rochester  and  so  to  Eltham ; 
and  so  I  rode  forth  in  the  King's  company."  It  was 
on  this  occasion  that  Froissart  tells  of  "  walking  up  and 
down  in  a  gallery  before  the  King's  chamber,"  and  adds 
that  the  galleries  at  Eltham  were  "right  pleasant  and 
shady,  for  those  galleries  were  covered  with  vines." 
He  also  tells  us  of  the  hall.  The  Duke  of  Gloucester, 
we  read,  "  quitted  the  King's  chamber,  followed  by  the 
Earl  of  Derby,  and  entered  the  hall,  where  he  ordered 


282  POETS'  COUNTRY 

a  table  to  be  spread,  and  they  both  sat  down  to  dinner." 
A  scene  is  described  by  Froissart  at  Eltham,  which  is 
probably  very  like  what  must  have  occurred  to  Chaucer 
both  with  Richard  and,  after  his  deposition,  with 
Henry  IV. ;  for  Chaucer  must  have  been  here  fre- 
quently, not  only  when  the  Court  was  in  residence, 
but  also  at  other  times  when  he  had  charge  as  surveyor 
or  clerk  of  the  works  at  Greenwich  and  Eltham 
among  other  places.  Froissart  informs  us  of  his  own 
doings : — 

Then  the  King  desired  to  see  my  book  that  I  had  brought 
for  him ;  so  he  saw  it  in  his  chamber,  for  I  had  laid  it  there 
ready  on  his  bed.  When  the  King  opened  it,  it  pleased  him  well, 
for  it  was  fair  illumined  and  written,  and  covered  with  crimson 
velvet,  with  ten  buttons  of  silver  and  gilt  and  roses  of  gold  in  the 
midst,  with  two  great  clasps  gilt,  richly  wrought.  Then  the 
King  demanded  of  me  whereof  it  treated,  and  I  showed  him  how 
it  treated  of  matters  of  love;  whereof  the  King  was  glad,  and 
looked  in  it  and  read  in  many  places,  for  he  could  speak  and  read 
French  very  well.  And  he  caused  it  to  be  taken  by  a  knight 
of  his  chamber,  named  Sir  Richard  Credon,  to  bear  it  into  his 
secret  chamber. 

Froissart  relates  other  reminiscences  of  Eltham  at 
this  time,  namely,  the  year  1395.  He  tarried  in  the 
King  of  England's  Court  as  long  as  it  pleased  him,  not 
always  in  one  place,  for  the  King  oftentimes  removed 
to  Eltham,  to  Leeds,  to  Kingston,  to  Sheen,  to  Chertsey, 
or  to  Windsor,  all  in  the  neighbourhood  of  London, 
and  almost  all  in  Chaucer's  charge.  It  was  at  Eltham, 
in  1387,  that  Richard  had  received  the  deputation  of 


CHAUCER  283 

London  citizens  who  complained  of  the  prevalence  of  a 
rumour  that  the  King  was  about  to  deliver  Calais  into 
the  hands  of  the  French.  "  The  King  tarried  at 
Eltham,  right  pensive  and  full  of  displeasure  by  reason 
of  the  words  that  he  had  heard." 

Chaucer,  who  was  a  Kentish  Justice  of  the  Peace, 
had  been  M.P.  for  Kent  from  1386,  and  had  much  to 
do  with  various  works  along  the  shores  of  the  Thames, 
where  are  now  the  great  docks  and  embankments  of 
Woolwich  and  Tilbury  and  other  places  well  known. 
In  the  fourteenth  century  they  were  open  country,  and 
the  frequent  Thames  floods  rendered  constant  care 
needful.  At  Eltham  his  care  seems  to  have  been 
chiefly  for  the  gardens,  and  the  terraces  and  shady 
walks  which  so  pleased  the  French  chronicler  were 
probably  his  special  work.  There  are  still  extant  the 
accounts  rendered  from  time  to  time,  and  one  can  only 
wonder  how  the  poet  was  able  for  all  he  had  to  do,  or 
how  he  contrived  to  obtain  leisure  for  all  he  wrote. 
One  has,  too,  a  feeling  of  grudging  that  his  mind  should 
have  been  occupied  with  such  accounts  as  some  of  those 
still  preserved  in  the  Public  Record  Office.  They  have 
been  printed  by  the  Chaucer  Society.  The  particulars 
in  July  1389  are  very  full,  and  tell  us  of  his  charge  of 
the  park  as  well  as  of  the  house,  and  the  works  being 
carried  on  are  described  with  some  minuteness.  The 
storehouses,  the  orchards  and  the  terraces  are  mentioned. 
The  mill  was  a  very  important  item  among  the  out- 
buildings, but  the  gardens  were  apparently  the  chief 


284  POETS'  COUNTRY 

object  of  Chaucer's  care.  The  inventories  are  full  of 
homely  words  forced  into  a  kind  of  Latin,  and  comprise 
such  articles  as  a  bowl  for  mortar,  a  pipe,  that  is  a  large 
open  barrel,  pro  aqua  intus  carianda — for  carrying 
water  within, — a  tap,  scaffold  legs,  and  "  a  crowe  ferri " 
— an  iron  crowbar. 

We  are  not  surprised,  then,  to  find  frequent  refer- 
ences in  the  poems  to  gardens  and  garden  affairs.  A 
long  list  can  be  made  of  trees  such  as  must  have  been 
seen  in  the  parks  which  were  under  Chaucer's  charge. 
Hedges  were  already  everywhere  common,  and  fruit- 
trees  were  rapidly  multiplied — so  that,  to  judge  from 
his  writings  alone,  cherries,  figs,  peaches,  pears,  and 
raspberries  were  flourishing  in  England  as  well  as  apples 
and  grapes.  Gardens  were  formal  and  were  enclosed 
with  walls,  divided  by  ornamental  hedges  and  varied 
by  terraces  and  grassy  walks.  The  box  had  come  in 
as  well  as  yews  for  flower-beds,  while  roses  and  many 
other  flowers  were  cultivated  for  their  beauty  or  their 
perfume.  In  the  Romaunt  of  the  Rose  he  concludes  : — 

There  is  no  place  in  Paradise 
So  good  in  for  to  dwell  or  be, 
As  in  that  garden,  thoughte  me ; 
For  there  was  many  a  bird  singing. 

He  goes  on  to  speak  particularly  of  the  nightingale 
and  of  flocks  of  turtles  and  of  laverocks  and  "terins 
and  mavies,"  siskins,  that  is,  and  song  thrushes.  There 
is  much  more  of  the  same  kind  in  this  poem  ;  but  there 
are  also  references  to  a  period  probably  nearer  that  in 


CHAUCER  285 

which  he  had  the  superintendence  of  the  royal  enclosures 
round  Eltham.  Thus  the  opening  lines  of  the  Canter- 
bury Tales  speak  of  the  sweet  breath  of  the  zephyr 
inspiring  every  coppice  and  heath,  "the  tendre  croppes 
and  the  yonge  sonne," 

The  small  fowls  make  melody 
That  sleep  all  night  with  open  eye. 

Passages  are  numerous  and  no  modern  Chaucerian 
scholar  has  failed  to  notice  the  frequency  of  the  allusions 
to  the  care  and  improvement  of  parks  and  pleasaunces, 
wildernesses  and  walled  gardens.  No  doubt,  in  Windsor 
Castle  and  the  riverside  palace  of  Greenwich,  Chaucer 
may  have  found  the  objects  of  his  greatest  admiration 
as  well  as  at  Eltham ;  but  to  our  eyes  Eltham  alone 
allows  us  at  the  present  day  with  least  difficulty  to  see 
the  remains  of  a  country  house  of  the  first  quality  as 
it  was  in  his  day,  and  to  judge  a  little  of  the  picturesque 
surroundings,  the  trees  and  the  fountains,  in  which  he 
seems  to  have  personally  rejoiced  : — 

Certayn  I  am  ful  lyk,  indeed, 
To  him  that  cast  in  erthe  his  seed ; 
And  hath  joie  of  the  newe  spring 
Whan  it  greneth  in  the  ginning 
And  is  also  fair  and  fresh  of  flour, 
Lusty  to  seen,  swete  of  odour. 

In  the  Marchante's  Tale  he  speaks  of  the  original 
author  of  the  Romaunt  of  the  Rose.  He  was  one, 
among  others  of  his  "  honest  things,"  who 


286  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Made  a  gardin  walled  al  with  stoon : 
So  fair  a  gardin  woot  I  nowhere  noon, 
For  out  of  doute,  I  verraily  suppose 
That  he  that  wroot  the  Romance  of  the  Rose 
Ne  could  of  it  the  beautee  wel  devyse ; 
Ne  Priapus  ne  mighte  nat  suffyse, 
Though  he  be  god  of  gardins,  for  to  telle 
The  beautee  of  the  gardin  and  the  welle, 
That  stood  under  a  laurer,  alway  grene. 

It  is  to  Eltham,  then,  rather  than  to  any  of  the 
other  royal  residences  that  we  look  to  tell  us  something 
of  Chaucer  and  his  poetry.  The  alterations  have  been 
many  and  great.  Few  traces  remain  of  the  times  of 
Richard  II.  or  of  Henry  IV.,  but  enough,  with  an  old 
ground-plan  reproduced  in  Streatfeild  and  Larking's 
Hasted,  and  with  the  description  made  after  the  death 
of  Charles  I.,  to  tell  us  that  in  addition  to  the  moat  and 
its  three-arched  Gothic  bridge  and  the  ruined  hall,  with 
its  oaken  beams  and  its  grand  bay  windows,  the 
buildings  of  the  palace  were  of  considerable  extent. 
We  turn  out  of  the  street  of  the  suburban  town,  which 
in  the  fourteenth  century  must  have  consisted  of  little 
except  the  church  and  its  surroundings.  Some  old 
buildings  on  the  right,  in  a  kind  of  avenue,  catch  the 
eye.  They  obviously  date  from  the  early  Stuart  period. 
Here  was  the  lower  court  of  the  palace,  a  very  ancient 
red-brick  wall  bounding  the  view  on  the  opposite  side. 
In  this  lower  court  were  the  out-buildings,  and  it  seems 
likely  that,  as  recommended  by  the  Commission  of  the 
Commonwealth  Government,  some  of  the  old  building 
materials  were  used  to  make  separate  "  habitations  worth 


CHAUCER  287 

£25  a  year."  We  now  approach  the  moat,  where  a 
picturesque  bridge,  consisting,  as  already  mentioned, 
of  three  pointed  arches,  leads  into  the  upper  court  of 
the  palace. 

This  upper  court  is  thus  described :  It  consisted  of 
one  fair  chapel,  one  great  hall,  36  rooms  and  offices 
below  stairs,  with  two  large  cellars ;  and  above  stairs, 
in  lodgings  called  the  King's  side,  17  ;  the  Queen's  side, 
12 ;  and  the  Prince's  side,  9 ;  in  all  38  lodging-rooms. 
There  was  no  furniture,  but  the  hall  and  chapel  were 
wainscoted.  This  inner  court  covered  half  an  acre, 
including  a  garden  on  the  southern  side  called  "  the 
Arbour."  The  lower  court,  the  avenue,  namely,  through 
which  we  now  approach  the  bridge,  was  bounded  on 
the  eastern  side  by  the  brick  wall  mentioned  above, 
behind  which  lay  the  orchard,  and  the  offices  and  out- 
houses consisted  of  "  35  bays  of  buildings "  extending 
round  all  the  three  sides,  and  including  a  gate  on  the 
north  side  leading  into  the  village  of  Eltham. 

The  adjacent  parks,  in  Chaucer's  time,  must  have 
been  full  of  deer,  and  the  timber  felled  in  1649 
amounted  to  upwards  of  two  hundred  tons,  which  was 
sent  to  Deptford,  for  use  in  the  dockyard.  The  Great 
Park  had  been  estimated  in  the  reign  of  James  I.  as 
containing  612  acres,  1  rood,  and  10  poles,  and  adjoined 
the  Old  or  Middle  Park  of  308  acres,  and  the  New  or 
Home  Park  of  345.  The  Middle  Park  attained  a 
certain  celebrity  of  late  years  when  Blenkiron  had  here 
a  racing  stud ;  and  there  is  still,  in  spite  of  the  great 


288  POETS'  COUNTRY 

increase  in  the  number  of  villas  and  of  all  kinds  of 
houses  in  the  parish,  a  large  extent  of  open  land,  while 
the  views,  especially  to  southward  into  Kent,  are  full  of 
beautiful  scenery,  such  as  may  well  have  inspired  the 
poet. 

Chaucer's  connection  with  Eltham  ceased  during 
the  troubles  which  overtook  Richard  II.  For  some 
time  he  seems  to  have  been  without  any  employment 
under  the  Crown,  and  it  has  been  supposed  that  his 
enforced  leisure  may  have  been  spent  in  the  elaboration 
and  completion  of  the  Canterbury  Tales.  Better  times 
were  apparently  in  store  when  Henry  IV.,  the  son  of 
his  old  master  and  patron,  John  of  Gaunt,  succeeded  as 
king,  and  in  1399  we  find  him  taking  out  a  lease  of 
"The  Rose,"  a  house  which  stood  to  the  east  of  the 
Lady  Chapel  of  Westminster  Abbey.  The  site  is  now 
covered  by  Henry  the  Seventh's  Chapel,  and  the  lease 
is  preserved  in  the  Muniment  Room  of  the  Dean  and 
Chapter.  Here  he  died,  according  to  a  tradition  which 
may  be  accepted,  on  the  25th  October  1400,  when  he 
cannot  have  been  much  over  sixty  years  of  age.  He 
was  buried  in  the  south  transept,  in  the  eastern  aisle, 
the  first  of  a  long  list  of  men  whose  graves  or  whose 
monuments  have  conferred  on  this  spot  the  name  of 
"The  Poets'  Corner."  During  the  reign  of  Queen 
Mary,  in  1555,  Chaucer's  body  was  removed  to  a  more 
sumptuous  tomb  close  by,  and  in  1599  the  grave  of 
Edmund  Spenser  was  made  near  it. 


OLIVER   GOLDSMITH   AT   HYDE 
HOUSE   FARM 

No  suburb  of  London  has  changed  more  during  the 
past  century  than  that  which  lies  to  the  north-west. 
Five  miles  from  Tyburn  Turnpike — where  the  Marble 
Arch  stands  at  the  present  day — the  explorer  of  a 
hundred  years  ago  found  himself  as  much  in  the 
country  to  all  seeming  as  if  he  was  in  Wiltshire.  The 
road,  as  some  people  of  an  antiquarian  turn  were 
beginning  to  find  out,  was  among  the  oldest  in  Britain 
— nay,  there  were  those  who  said  it  was  there  before 
the  coming  of  the  Romans.  It  led  through  a  pleasant 
undulating  country,  well  wooded  for  the  most  part, 
with  higher  hills  rising  on  either  hand.  Here  and  there 
stood  a  farmhouse,  here  and  there  a  stately  manor- 
house.  Edgware  lay  beyond,  on  a  sunny  upward 
slope,  and  woods  bounded  the  view  toward  the  north. 
The  name  probably  denoted  a  worth,  or  clere,  or  opening 
in  a  forest,  for  here  were  the  remains  of  the  Middlesex 
Forest,  and  this  was  the  edge  of  the  hill  over  which  the 
road,  called  the  Watling  Street  by  the  Middle  Saxons, 
pursued  its  journey  towards  Chester.  In  the  days 

289  U 


290  POETS'  COUNTRY 

which  we  would  like  to  realise  just  now,  the  days  when 
George  III.  had  been  some  fourteen  years  on  the 
throne,  the  Edgware  Road  from  the  north-eastern 
corner  of  Hyde  Park  to  the  village  of  Edgware,  a 
stretch  of  some  six  or  seven  miles,  was  completely 
rustic.  A  few  houses  were  at  the  Paddington  cross- 
roads near  Lisson,  where  the  Grove  marked  the  site  of 
an  old  manor-house,  Lilestone,  now  occupied  by  the 
buildings  of  Queen  Charlotte's  Hospital.  Farther 
north,  on  the  right,  rose  Hampstead,  with  a  church  near 
the  summit,  and  when  we  proceeded  a  short  way 
farther,  two  or  three  waste  tracts,  the  common  of 
Marylebone,  the  Heath  of  Hampstead,  the  Kenwood  of 
Highgate,  lay  on  the  right  toward  the  distant  city. 
Immediately  on  the  left  was  Willesden,  with  its  old 
church,  and  another  great  piece  of  once  forest  land, 
Wormwood  Scrubs.  It  was  to  this  region  that  Oliver 
Goldsmith  retired  to  spend  what  turned  out  to  be  the 
last  summer  of  his  life — a  region  within  easy  reach  of 
the  scenes  and  the  people  he  loved  best,  yet,  for 
purposes  of  literary  work,  secluded  and  undisturbed. 

It  would  be  interesting  if  among  some  old  bundle  of 
family  correspondence,  perhaps,  we  should  come  upon  a 
letter  describing  a  visit  to  Dr.  Goldsmith.  That  some- 
thing of  the  kind  may  well  have  existed — may  exist 
still — is  evident  from  a  short  passage  in  Boswell's 
Johnson,  where,  under  Friday,  April  10,  1772,  he  tells 
us  of  meeting  Goldsmith  at  dinner  at  General  Ogle- 
thorpe's,  Johnson  being  also  present.  Goldsmith  told 


KINGSBURY    GREEN,    NEAR    LONDON 

Kingsbury  Greeii  with  its  old  inu,  "The  Plough/'  has  all 
the  features  of  a  village  of  Goldsmith's  time  : — 

Low  lies  that  house  where  nut-brown  draughts  inspired, 
Where  gray-beard  mirth  and  smiling  toil  retired. 


GOLDSMITH  291 

the  party  of  his  being  busy  with  his  Natural  History, 
and,  "that  he  might  have  full  leisure  for  it,  he  had 
taken  lodgings  at  a  farmer's  house,  near  to  the  six  mile 
stone,  on  the  Edgware  Road."  It  seems  that  he  and  a 
pamphleteer,  also  from  Ireland,  called  Bott,  had  gone 
in  1771  to  what  in  one  book  is  called  "High  House 
Farm,"  but  probably  more  correctly  "  Hyde  House 
Farm,"  now  a  villa.  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  calls  it  "a 
farm  near  Hyde,"  but  there  is  no  place  named  simply 
Hyde  in  that  neighbourhood.  "The  Hyde"  is  the 
name  of  a  hamlet,  partly  in  the  parish  of  Hendon,  but 
chiefly  in  that  of  Kingsbury,  and  in  the  eighteenth 
century  consisted  probably  of  little  more  than  this 
farm,  which  belonged  to  All  Souls'  College,  Oxford, 
which  also  owns  the  adjacent  manor  of  Kingsbury. 
Walford,  though  his  data  are  questionable,  gives  the 
most  circumstantial  account  of  the  place,  and  a  wood- 
cut, in  his  Greater  London  (i.  276).  The  farm  lies  on 
the  left,  presumably  the  north,  side  of  Kingsbury  Lane, 
between  Kingsbury  Green  and  the  sixth  milestone  on 
the  high  road  from  London  to  Edgware.  "  The  house," 
he  continues,  "  is  said  to  be  between  200  and  300  years 
old,  and  is  of  brick,  and  of  two  floors.  The  front 
portion  of  the  building,  with  the  exception  of  some 
of  the  windows  having  been  renewed  and  that  the 
heavy  beams  of  the  ceiling  have  given  place  to  flat 
stucco  work,  remains  in  much  the  same  condition  as 
when  it  was  occupied  by  Goldsmith  more  than  a 
century  ago."  This  was  written,  or  at  least  published, 


292  POETS'  COUNTRY 

about  1890.  Walford  adds:  "The  rooms  at  the  back, 
however,  were  rebuilt  only  a  few  years  ago,  at  which 
time  a  small  chamber,  which  had  been  used  by  Gold- 
smith as  his  study,  was  unfortunately  demolished. 
This  room,  we  understand,  contained  a  small  cupboard, 
which  might  have  been  used  as  a  bookcase,  and  bore 
unmistakable  signs  of  having  been  occupied  by  the 
author  of  Animated  Nature" 

All  this,  with  its  "  between  200  and  300  years  "  and 
its  "a  few  years  ago"  and  the  "cupboard"  with  its 
"  unmistakable  signs  "  is  sufficiently  tantalising.  We 
return  to  Boswell  with  pleasure.  He  continues,  still 
under  the  same  entry  in  April  1772,  to  tell  us  about 
Goldsmith  at  "the  six  mile  stone."  He  carried  down 
his  books  "  in  two  returned  post-chaises.  He  said  he 
believed  the  farmer's  family  thought  him  an  odd 
character,  similar  to  that  in  which  the  Spectator 
appeared  to  his  landlady  and  her  children  :  he  was  '  The 
Gentleman.' ' 

In  the  same  paragraph,  before  concluding  his 
account  of  the  conversation  at  General  Oglethorpe's 
table  on  that  Friday  in  April,  Boswell  adds :  "  Mr. 
Mickle,  the  translator  of  The  Lusiad,  and  I  went  to 
visit  him  at  this  place  a  few  days  afterwards.  He  was 
not  at  home ;  but,  having  a  curiosity  to  see  his  apart- 
ment, we  went  in,  and  found  curious  scraps  of  descrip- 
tions of  animals  scrawled  upon  the  wall  with  a  black 
lead  pencil."  Here,  unfortunately,  Boswell  leaves  off. 
It  may  not,  perhaps,  be  going  too  far  to  gather  the 


GOLDSMITH  293 

drift  of  his  observations  as  to  Goldsmith's  zoological 
notes  from  a  passage  in  the  Johnson,  under  the  year 
1776.  Here,  speaking  of  the  epitaph  in  Westminster 
Abbey,  he  mentions  Johnson's  opinion  that  Goldsmith 
hardly  knew  a  horse  from  a  cow.  Boswell  adds  his 
own  views  on  the  subject :  "  Bouffon  tells  us  that  the 
cow  sheds  her  horns  every  two  years — a  most  palpable 
error,  which  Goldsmith  faithfully  transferred  into  his 
book."  It  is  wonderful  that  Bouffon,  who  lived  so 
much  in  the  country,  at  his  noble  seat,  should  have 
fallen  into  such  a  blunder.  That  Goldsmith,  who, 
whatever  his  knowledge,  was  not  without  observation, 
could  have  followed  the  Frenchman  in  this  particular 
instance,  where  a  moment's  thought  would  have  cor- 
rected the  error,  only  shows  how  needful  quiet  was  to 
the  peculiar  bent  of  his  genius.  At  The  Hyde  he  is 
believed  to  have  composed  many  better  pieces  of  work 
than  his  Animated  Nature.  Moreover,  he  was  born 
and  passed  his  early  years  in  an  agricultural  country, 
where  cattle  and  green  crops  abounded.  Born  at 
Forgney,  or  Pallas,  near  Ballymahon,  in  the  county 
of  Longford,  in  1728,  he  did  not  proceed  to  Dublin 
before  1744.  Afterwards,  until  1752,  he  led,  according 
to  his  biographers,  "  an  unsettled  life  "  in  Ireland.  The 
country — and  The  Hyde,  though  but  six  miles  from 
London,  was  completely  in  the  country  even  ten  years 
ago — must  have  been  full  of  the  sights  and  sounds  of 
his  youth.  The  Deserted  Village  appeared  in  1770, 
and  must  have  been  written  while  he  was  searching 


294  POETS'  COUNTRY 

for  such  a  retreat  as  this  at  The  Hyde.  We  do  not 
know,  in  fact,  for  certain  when  it  was  that  he  settled 
permanently  at  that  particular  farm.  Similar  farms 
existed  in  plenty,  at  Enfield,  for  instance,  or  at 
Edmonton,  where  Charles  Lamb  much  later  found  a 
retreat,  or  till  our  own  day,  not  seven  miles  off,  at 
Hayes  or  Bedfont. 

By  1764  he  had  gone  much  farther  afield.  Mr. 
Austin  Dobson  has  fully  described  his  visit  to  Bath, 
about  1760.  The  Vicar  of  Wakejield  is  always  said  to 
have  been  suggested  by  a  visit  to  Yorkshire  in  that 
year.  In  truth,  though  Goldsmith  can  hardly  be 
described  as  a  well-educated  man,  he  had  a  power  of 
assimilation  which  Johnson  exactly  denoted  by  the 
line  in  his  epitaph — a  line  often  assigned  erroneously 
to  some  classical  original — in  which  he  asserted  that 
Goldsmith  touched  nothing  that  he  did  not  adorn  : — 

Qui  nullum  fere  scribendi  genus  non  tetigit,  nullura  quod 
tetigit  non  ornavit. 

In  the  letters  entitled  The  Citizen  of  the  World  he 
constantly  describes  excursions  into  the  country  im- 
mediately round  London.  His  account,  for  example, 
of  Kentish  Town  and  "Pangrace"  is  in  the  highest 
style  of  burlesque  :  "  Islington  is  a  pretty  neat  town 
mostly  built  of  brick,  with  a  church  and  bells  ;  it  has 
a  small  lake,  or  rather  pond,  in  the  midst.  .  .  .  After 
having  surveyed  the  curiosities  of  this  fair  and  beautiful 
town,  I  proceeded  forward,  leaving  a  fair  stone  building, 


GOLDSMITH  295 

called  the  White  Conduit  House,  on  my  right,"  and  so 
on.  His  derivation  of  the  name  of  Kentish  Town  is  an 
admirable  parody  of  the  guesswork  indulged  in  by  most 
of  the  London  topographers  of  his  day :  "  This  pretty 
town  probably  borrowed  its  name  from  its  vicinity  to 
the  county  of  Kent ;  and  indeed  it  is  not  unnatural 
that  it  should,  as  there  are  only  London  and  the 
adjacent  villages  that  lie  between  them."  So,  too,  he 
mocks  at  some  of  the  travellers  of  his  day :  "  I  could 
have  wished,  indeed,  to  satisfy  my  curiosity  without 
going  thither,  but  that  was  impracticable,  and  there- 
fore I  resolved  to  go." 

As  to  the  methods  of  locomotion  in  the  neighbour- 

o 

hood  of  London,  he  tells  us  of  two.  Travellers  either 
take  coach,  which  costs  ninepence,  or  they  may  go 
afoot,  which  costs  nothing  :  "  In  my  opinion,  a  coach 
is  by  far  the  most  eligible  convenience,  but  I  was 
resolved  to  go  on  foot,  having  considered  with  myself 
that  going  in  that  manner  would  be  the  cheapest  way." 
There  are  many  allusions  in  these  delightful  Chinese 
letters  to  the  excursions  he  habitually  made  into  villages 
near  London.  In  one  he  goes  to  see  an  election,  and, 
there  is  no  doubt,  on  that  occasion  he  clearly  distin- 
guished, at  any  rate,  between  a  cow  and  a  dog.  He 
is  asked  awkward  questions,  and  "  I  know  not,"  he 
reports,  "what  might  have  been  the  consequences  of 
my  reserve,  had  not  the  attention  of  the  mob  been 
called  off  to  a  skirmish  between  a  brandy-drinker's 
cow  and  a  gin -drinker's  mastiff,  which  turned  out, 


296  POETS'  COUNTRY 

greatly  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  mob,  in  favour  of 
the  mastiff." 

Perhaps  there  is  an  echo  of  the  days  at  The  Hyde, 
or  some  other  village  retreat,  in  one  of  these  letters, 
which  begins :  "  It  is  no  unpleasing  contemplation  to 
consider  the  influence  which  soil  and  climate  have 
upon  the  disposition  of  the  inhabitants,  the  animals, 
and  vegetables  of  different  countries."  This  influence 
he  remarks  especially  in  England.  "  The  same  hidden 
cause  which  gives  courage  to  their  dogs  and  cocks 
gives  also  fierceness  to  their  men."  It  is,  of  course, 
the  inhabitants  of  towns  who  notice  most  the  aspect  of 
the  country,  the  principal  reason  probably  being  that 
the  country  is  visited  in  fine  weather,  or  at  least  in 
summer,  for  rest  and  amusement,  and  there  can  be 
little  doubt  that  those  who  have  passed  their  youth  in 
the  country  enjoy  the  country  sights  and  sounds  the 
most. 

Goldsmith,  notwithstanding  his  vaccine  ignorance, 
was  thoroughly  imbued  with  the  not  altogether  im- 
aginary happiness  of  country  life.  His  farmhouse 
retreat  is  minutely  described  in  lines,  the  very  first 
word  of  which  indicates  his  pleasure  in  the  rural  land- 
scape he  depicts.  "  Sweet,"  he  says — 

Sweet  was  the  sound,  when  oft  at  evening's  close 
Up  yonder  hill  the  village  murmur  rose  ; 
There,  as  I  passed  with  careless  steps  and  slow, 
The  mingling  notes  came  softened  from  below ; 
The  swain  responsive  as  the  milkmaid  sung, 
The  sober  herd  that  lowed  to  meet  their  young ; 


FARMHOUSE   IN   HYDE   LANE 

In  Hyde  Lane,  off  the  Edgeware  Road,  is  a  farmhouse, 
now  much  modernised,  to  which  Goldsmith  occasionally 
retired  to  write ;  but  with  its  surroundings  of  fine  elm- 
trees  and  rich  pasture,  although  only  a  few  miles  from  the 
Marble  Arch,  it  is  still  an  English  country  scene  such  as  he 
describes. 


GOLDSMITH  297 

The  noisy  geese  that  gabbled  o'er  the  pool, 

The  playful  children  just  let  loose  from  school ; 

The  watch-dog's  voice  that  bayed  the  whispering  wind, 

And  the  loud  laugh  that  spoke  the  vacant  mind  ; 

These  all  in  sweet  confusion  sought  the  shade, 

And  filled  each  pause  the  nightingale  had  made. 

This  is  often  quoted  as  the  description  of  an  Irish 
village.  There  is  not  an  Irish  touch  or  allusion  in  it. 
The  last  line — one  of  the  best — is  fatal  to  any  such 
idea.  "In  Ireland,"  says  Mr.  Alfred  Newton,  in  his 
Dictionary  of  Birds,  speaking  of  the  geographical 
distribution  of  the  nightingale,  "there  is  no  pretence, 
even,  of  its  appearance."  The  whole  passage  fits  a 
Middlesex  village,  or  rather  hamlet,  exactly.  The 
ale-house  is  not  Irish,  and  all  through  a  thousand 
allusions,  more  or  less  precise,  show  whence  came  the 
immediate  inspiration  of  the  poem. 

It  is  the  same  in  The  Traveller  : — 

Ye  glittering  towns,  with  wealth  and  splendour  crowned ; 

Ye  fields,  where  summer  spreads  profusion  round ; 

Ye  lakes,  whose  vessels  catch  the  busy  gale ; 

Ye  bending  swains,  that  dress  the  flowery  vale  ; 

For  me  your  tributary  stores  combine : 

Creation's  heir,  the  world,  the  world  is  mine  ! 

This  breathes  of  London  and  its  suburbs,  and  of 
nowhere  else.  Just  as  much  do  we-seefti  to  see  "  Hyde 
Farm  at  the  six  mile  stone,"  in  the  famous  passage  of 
the  same  poem  where  his  genius  spreads  her  wing  : — 

And  flies  where  Britain  courts  the  western  spring ; 
Where  lawns  extend  that  scorn  Arcadian  pride, 
And  brighter  streams  than  famed  Hydaspes  glide ; 


298  POETS'  COUNTRY 

There  all  around  the  gentlest  breezes  stray, 
There  gentle  music  melts  on  every  spray ; 
Creation's  mildest  charms  are  there  combined. 

A  visit  to  Goldsmith  in  his  Edgware  Road  retreat 
might  well  have  been  described  by  his  contemporary, 
the  other  literary  physician,  Smollett.  There  are  many 
passages  in  Humphrey  Clinker,  for  instance,  which 
answer  well  to  The  Hyde.  We  cannot,  in  all  the 
changes  of  modern  civilised  suburban  existence,  realise 
what  it  meant  a  hundred  and  forty  years  ago  to  live 
at  a  farm,  even  so  near  London.  Here  is  a  specimen 
from  Smollett : — 

The  house  is  old-fashioned  and  irregular,  but  lodgeable  and 
commodious.  To  the  south  it  has  the  river  in  front  .  .  .  and  on 
the  north  there  is  a  rising  ground,  covered  with  an  agreeable 
plantation ;  the  greens  and  walks  are  kept  in  the  nicest  order,  and 
all  is  rural  and  romantic. 

Delightful  as  Goldsmith  seems  to  have  found  his 
country  workshop,  he  left  it  and  went  into  London 
when  what  proved  to  be  his  last  illness  attacked  him. 
A  man  who  had  travelled  so  much,  and  among  so  many 
unwholesome  places,  can  hardly  at  forty-six  have  con- 
tracted what  we  now  describe  as  typhoid  fever.  But 
he  undoubtedly  had  feverish  symptoms,  and,  as  is 
proverbially  the  case  with  men  of  some  medical  know- 
ledge, he  mistook  his  own  complaint,  and  insisted, 
contrary  to  advice,  on  using  medicines  which  only 
aggravated  his  disorder.  We  read  of  mental  distress,  of 
debts  accumulating,  of  many  troubles  and  trials  which 


GOLDSMITH  299 

would  have  weighed  but  lightly  on  a  man  in  perfect 
health.  We  read  also  of  the  clients  who  besieged  his 
lodgings  at  No.  2  Brick  Court,  in  the  Temple,  and  of 
the  grief  of  the  principal  literary  men  of  the  time. 
The  house,  originally  erected  in  1704,  and  the  little 
court  near  the  fountain,  the  hall  and  the  garden  are 
much  as  they  were  on  April  4,  1774,  when  he  breathed 
his  last  There  was  some  talk  of  a  tomb  in  Westminster 
Abbey,  but  nothing  was  done,  and  a  grave  was  found 
for  him  in  the  narrow  corner  of  the  Temple  churchyard, 
north  of  the  transept  and  the  Round  Church,  which 
must  have  been  so  familiar  to  him.  It  is  said  that  his 
grave  is  not  to  be  identified,  but  if  we  observe  that 
there  is  only  room  for  three  graves  side  by  side,  this 
does  not  greatly  signify.  Here  he  was  buried  on  the 
9th,  "  when,"  as  Laurence  Hutton  records,  his  staircase 
was  crowded  "with  mourners  of  all  ranks  and  con- 
ditions of  life,  conspicuous  among  them  being  the 
outcasts  of  both  sexes,  who  loved  and  wept  for  him 
because  of  the  goodness  he  had  done."  A  plain  stone 
marks  the  little  burial-ground  since  1860 ;  and  thither 
constantly  come  wreaths  and  memorials,  many  from 
America,  lest  the  visitor  should  fail  to  find  the  place. 


KEATS   AT   ENFIELD 

IT  is  now  a  hundred  years  since  John  Keats  was  sent 
to  school  at  Enfield.  His  father,  a  well-to-do  livery- 
stable  keeper  in  Finsbury,  came  to  a  tragical  end  within 
a  few  months,  being  thrown  from  his  horse  and  killed 
while  riding  home  from  Southgate,  another  little  town 
in  the  same  district.  This  sad  event  seems  to  have 
affected  the  future  poet  in  several  ways.  It  led  to  his 
falling  entirely  under  the  influence,  one  cannot  correctly 
say  the  control,  of  his  mother  and  of  her  mother,  Mrs. 
Jennings,  who  lived  near,  if  not  in  Enfield.  His  mother 
appears,  like  himself,  to  have  been  the  creature  of 
impulse,  and  her  imprudent  second  marriage,  soon  after 
his  father's  death,  no  doubt  had  its  place  in  forming 
his  mind.  If  we  remember  the  condition  of  Southgate 
and  Enfield  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
we  can  understand  better  something  of  the  boy's  turn 
of  mind.  The  dark  woods  which  covered  the  northern 
parts  of  Middlesex,  many  fragments  of  which  still 
remain,  were  calculated,  even  without  the  fatal  accident 
in  their  midst  which  deprived  John  Keats  of  his  father, 
to  lead  him  to  dwell  on  their  mysterious  depths  and  to 

300 


KEATS  301 

be  attracted  or  repelled  by  their  gloom.  As  he  grew 
older,  he  peopled  them  in  imagination  with  visions,  often 
dismal.  There  were  fairies  and  elfin  grots  in  the  woods 
with  pale  kings  and  princes,  but  again  they  took  a  more 
cheerful  aspect,  and  we  have  "woodland  alleys  never 
ending,"  and  "bowery  clefts  and  leafy  shades."  All 
these  things,  whether  grave  or  gay,  whether  sad  or 
joyful,  he  found  in  abundance  close  to  where  he  lived, 
and  there  is  scarcely  a  natural  allusion  or  an  elaborate 
simile  in  all  his  work  which  may  riot  be  traced  to  the 
unfading  impressions  made  upon  his  mind  in  his  early 
life  at  Enfield. 

Within  a  very  few  years  the  whole  aspect  of  this 
suburban  village  has  been  altered.  It  used  to  consist 
of  a  quiet  street  or  two,  interspersed  with  many  trees, 
and  much  ivy,  set  off  by  old  red  brick.  Then  came  the 
railway,  and  the  scenery  was  speedily  changed.  The 
handsome  house,  with  its  Georgian  facade,  of  "fine 
proportions  and  rich  ornaments  in  moulded  brick,"  in 
which  Mr.  John  Clarke  kept  his  school,  was  pulled 
down  to  make  way  for  the  station ;  the  streets  were 
filled  with  gaudy  shops ;  and  the  ancient  roads,  with 
their  gardens  and  clipped  hedges,  their  ironwork  and 
gate  pillars,  their  velvet  lawns  on  which  small-paned 
bow  windows  looked  out,  were  turned  into  rows  of 
neatly  stuccoed  villas ;  trees  were  cut  down,  and  a  view 
of  factory  chimneys  terminates  what  had  been  a  sylvan 
vista  with  a  faint  line  of  blue  hills. 

There  still  long  remained  but  little   injured  such 


302  POETS'  COUNTRY 

picturesque  roads  as  the  once  famous  Baker  Street.  It 
led  north-east  from  Enfield  towards  Clay  Hill  and 
Forty  Hill  on  the  way  to  Cheshunt.  For  a  mile  or 
more  it  consisted  of  red -brick  houses  separated  by 
gardens  and  well-wooded  pleasaunces.  The  houses 
were  of  the  most  orthodox  "  Queen  Anne  "  pattern,  or 
what  in  America  is  described  as  "Colonial."  The 
gardens  were  enclosed  by  low  walls,  finished  off  with 
brick  posts  topped  by  large  balls.  Toward  the  roadway 
each  of  these  "  compounds  "  had  a  wrought-iron  railing 
of  elaborate  pattern,  suggesting  that  an  artist  had  been 
at  work  when  the  houses  were  built,  perhaps  the  great 
Tijou  himself  who  designed  the  grilles  at  St.  Paul's  and 
at  Hampton  Court.  All  these  mansions,  though  old- 
fashioned,  were  in  perfect  preservation,  and  each  had  its 
name  and  history  when  Keats  was  at  school.  It  is  not 
yet  twenty  years  since  the  first  of  them  was  pulled 
down  to  make  way  for  a  row  of  small — and  hideous — 
houses.  For  the  railway  had  brought  London  to 
Enfield,  and,  as  if  to  proclaim  its  destructive  mission, 
began  operations  by  the  removal  of  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  and  most  interesting  of  the  older  buildings. 
This,  as  I  have  said,  was  the  school  kept  by  John 
Clarke,  a  clergyman,  the  father  of  Charles  Cowden 
Clarke,  one  of  Keats's  earliest  friends.  The  house 
had  other  claims  on  our  regard.  Mr.  Colvin  says 
of  it  :— 

The  schoolhouse  occupied  by  Mr.  Clarke  had  originally  been 
built  for  a  rich  West  Indian  merchant,  in  the  finest  style  of  early 


KEATS  303 

Georgian  classic  architecture,  and  stood  in  a  pleasant  and  spacious 
garden  at  the  lower  end  of  the  town.  When,  years  afterwards, 
the  site  was  used  for  a  railway  station,  the  old  house  was  for  some 
time  allowed  to  stand ;  but  later  it  was  taken  down,  and  the 
facade,  with  its  fine  proportions  and  rich  ornaments  in  moulded 
brick,  was  transported  to  South  Kensington  Museum  as  a  choice 
example  of  the  style. 

Thorne,  in  his  Environs  of  London,  though  he  says 
nothing  of  Keats  at  Enfield,  adds  considerably  both  to 
our  knowledge  of  the  house  and  also  to  the  associations 
which  clustered  round  it.  According  to  this  account, 
just  before  Clarke  set  up  his  school  here,  it  was  in  the 
occupation  of  Isaac  Disraeli,  whose  father,  Benjamin, 
had  settled  here  soon  after  his  coming  to  England  in 
1748.  His  distinguished  grandson  and  namesake  says 
of  him,  "  He  made  his  fortune  in  the  midway  of  life,  and 
settled  near  Enfield,  where  he  formed  an  Italian  garden, 
entertained  his  friends,  played  whist  with  Sir  Horace 
Mann,  who  was  his  great  acquaintance,  and  who  had 
known  his  brother  at  Venice  as  a  banker."  Thorne, 
when  he  has  made  this  quotation  from  Lord  Beacons- 
field,  goes  on,  unconsciously,  to  correct,  in  one  not 
unimportant  particular,  the  account  given  by  Mr. 
Colvin  of  the  house.  "  Its  beautiful  facade  and  tracery- 
work  of  carved  brick,  probably  unrivalled  in  England, 
is  doomed  to  destruction  by  the  march  of  mechanics." 
Mr.  Colvin  speaks  of  "moulded  brick,"  which  would 
surely  not  have  been  worth  preserving  "  as  a  screen  in 
the  architectural  section  "  at  South  Kensington. 

Before  we  leave  the  old-fashioned  streets  and  market- 


304  POETS'  COUNTRY 

place  of  Enfield  to  seek  in  the  neighbouring  woods  and 
the  royal  chase  for  Keats's  sources  of  poetic  inspiration, 
we  must  pay  a  short  visit  to  the  church  and  glance 
at  those  monuments  which  were  here  when  the  boy 
attended  service  within  the  old  walls.  We  must  en- 
deavour to  realise  what,  in  the  mind  of  a  well-read 
and  intelligent  visitor,  probably  stood  out  most  pro- 
minently. 

A  hundred  years  ago  the  operation  known  as 
"  church  restoration  "  had  not  been  invented.  It  had 
not  been  discovered  that  parishioners  who  had  an  old 
church  should  be  ashamed  to  let  it  appear  old.  Associa- 
tion still  went  for  something,  and  men  were  proud  to 
sit  in  the  pews  where  their  fathers  and  mothers  had 
sat,  and  to  see  the  old  funeral  hatchments  bearing 
their  family  arms  still  hanging  on  the  walls.  Enfield 
Church  had  not  been  "restored"  in  Keats's  time.  It 
retained  marks  of  the  style  in  which  it  had  been  built 
while  the  hundred  years  of  strife  which  we  call  the 
Wars  of  the  Roses  raged  among  the  Middlesex  hills  and 
through  the  adjoining  Chase.  The  most  ancient  and 
conspicuous  of  the  monuments  is  that  of  a  lady,  a 
majority  of  whose  relations  and  friends  perished  then 
or  at  the  hands  of  the  headsman.  At  the  battle  of 
Barnet  the  King-maker  and  his  brother  were  slain  with 
so  many  others  of  the  old  nobility.  Barnet  is  the  next 
parish.  Much  of  the  fighting  was  in  Enfield  Chase. 
Jocosa,  in  Latin,  or  Joyce,  in  English,  was  her  name, 
and  she  was  Lady  Tiptoft,  the  daughter  of  Lord 


THE  VALE   OF   HEALTH,   HAMPSTEAD 

A  favourite  resort  of  Keats  when  he  lived  in  the 
neighbourhood.  The  source  of  the  Fleet  or  Hole-bourne 
is  here,  the  river  which  gives  its  names  to  Fleet  Street  and 
Holborn  Hill.  Although  within  four  miles  of  Charing 
Cross,  it  looks  in  summer-time  as  if  it  might  be  a  hundred 
miles  from  London.  (See  p.  281.) 


KEATS  305 

Cherlton,  and  mother  of  the  Earl  of  Worcester,  whose 
name  figures  largely  both  in  the  literary  and  the 
political  annals  of  the  time,  and  who  was  beheaded 
on  Tower  Hill  in  1470,  when,  as  old  Fuller  says, 
"  the  axe  did  at  one  blow  cut  off  more  learning  than 
was  left  in  the  heads  of  all  the  surviving  nobility." 
Lady  Tiptoft  lived  at  Worcester  Manor  -  House, 
an  old  house  lately  represented  by  Forty  Hall,  in 
this  parish. 

There  are  many  other  interesting  monuments  be- 
sides this  one  of  Worcester's  mother,  with  its  heraldic 
trappings.  Some  of  them  must  often  have  been  seen 
by  John  Keats.  Among  them  perhaps  the  most  re- 
markable is  a  brass  of  a  late  date  on  Ann  Gery,  who, 
like  Keats  long  after,  seems  to  have  been  at  school 
at  Enfield  in  the  seventeenth  century.  She  died  in 
1643  :— 

Here  lies  one  interred, 

One  that  scarce  erred ; 

A  virgin  modest,  free  from  folly ; 

A  virgin  knowing,  patient,  holy  ; 

A  virgin  blest  with  beauty  here  ; 

A  virgin  crowned  with  glory  there. 

Holy  virgins  read  and  say 

We  shall  hither  all  one  day. 

Live  well,  ye  must 

Be  turned  to  dust. 

Very  often,  in  looking  through  the  one  little  volume 
which  is  large  enough  to  contain  all  Keats  ever  pub- 
lished, we  come  on  echoes  of  these  quaint  lines  : — 

x 


306  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Thus  ye  live  on  high,  and  then 
On  the  earth  ye  live  again  ; 
And  the  souls  ye  left  behind  you 
Teach  us,  here,  the  way  to  find  you, 
Where  your  other  souls  are  joying, 
Never  slumber'd,  never  cloying. 
Here,  your  earth-born  souls  still  speak 
To  mortals,  of  their  little  week ; 
Of  their  sorrows  and  delights  ; 
Of  their  passions  and  their  spites ; 
Of  their  glory  and  their  shame  ; 
What  doth  strengthen  and  what  maim. 

The  gorgeous  figure  of  Lady  Tiptoft,  too,  must  have 
been  noticed  in  its  singular  armorial  mantle  and 
emblems  of  greatness,  that  seem  out  of  place  on  the 
tomb  of  one  who  lived  amid  such  tragedies  as  the  fall 
of  the  House  of  Lancaster  and  the  cruel  end  of  her 
nearest  relatives  and  friends.  Are  they  not  alluded  to 
in  those  early  verses  beginning, 

Hadst  thou  liv'd  in  days  of  old  ? 

He  can  hardly  have  escaped  knowledge  of  the  proud 
lady's  history,  if  only  as  a  reader  of  Shakespeare  : — 

Hadst  thou  liv'd  when  chivalry 

Lifted  up  her  lance  on  high, 

Tell  me  what  thou  wouldst  have  been  ? 

Ah !  I  see  the  silver  sheen 

Of  thy  broidered,  floating  vest 

Co v' ring  half  thine  ivory  breast ; 

Which,  O  heavens !  I  should  see, 

But  that  cruel  destiny 

Has  placed  a  golden  cuirass  there ; 

Keeping  secret  what  is  fair. 


KEATS  307 

The  allusion  is  plainly  here  to  the  elaborately  clothed 
effigy  in  brass  of  Lady  Tiptoft.  Her  mantle  gives  her 
own  and  her  late  husband's  arms,  only  half  of  each 
shield  being  visible.  The  rest  of  the  arms,  including 
the  three  lions  of  England,  for  the  lady  was  of  royal 
descent,  are  visible  among  the  decorations  of  the  monu- 
ment ;  but  it  is  obviously  to  the  half  mantle  that  the 
poet  alludes. 

In  the  town,  too,  he  must  have  seen  and  observed 
the  remains  of  the  place  in  which  had  lived  the  heroes 
and  heroines  of  whom,  as  we  are  told,  he  was  never 
tired  of  reading.  At  a  time  when  Gothic  art  and 
English  mediaeval  history  were  only  beginning  to  be 
studied,  he  became  familiar  with  Spenser  and  with  Chap- 
man's Homer.  A  little  later  he  was  much  affected  by 
the  mock  medisevalism,  but  real  poetry,  of  Chatterton. 
Moreover,  as  Mr.  Colvin  records,  the  books  he  read 
with  the  greatest  eagerness  were  those  relating  to 
ancient  mythology,  such  as  Tooke's  Pantheon,  Lem- 
priere,  and  the  abridgment  of  Spence's  Polymetis.  After 
he  left  school  he  constantly  walked  over  from  Edmonton 
to  visit  his  old  school-fellows,  particularly  his  master's 
son,  Cowden  Clarke,  and  it  was  then  he  first  became 
acquainted  with  the  Faerie  Queene.  We  can  still  see 
a  few  hundred  yards  of  the  road,  so  far  unbuilt  upon, 
between  the  two  villages,  and  can  picture  to  ourselves 
how  the  shady  trees,  the  relics  of  the  ancient  Middlesex 
forest,  "  the  glades  and  wildernesses,"  not  yet  altogether 
overwhelmed  by  bricks  and  mortar,  and  much  more 


308  POETS'  COUNTRY 

continuous  a  hundred  years  ago,  must  have  ministered 
to  his  poetic  feeling  as  he  walked. 

To  judge  fully  of  the  influence  of  Enfield  and  its 
surroundings  upon  the  romantic  instincts  of  the  boy 
poet,  a  wider  survey  is  necessary.  We  must  seek  it  in 
the  forest  and  the  chase,  which  lay,  and  lie,  on  the 
northern  side  of  the  town.  The  chase,  part  of  the 
primeval  forest  of  which  we  read  in  the  days  of 
Henry  II.,  when  it  was  described  for  us  by  Fitzstephen 
in  his  Life  of  Thomas  Becket,  joins  on  the  west  the 
woods  about  Hadley  and  Barnet,  and  here  the  scene 
acquires  additional  interest  as  the  field  of  that  battle  in 
which  was  decided  the  fate  of  the  House  of  Lancaster. 
It  must  have  been  somewhere  along  this  well- wooded 
ridge  that,  as  we  read  in  Shakespeare's  Henry  VI. 
Part  iii.  (Act  v.  sc.  2),  Warwick,  the  King-maker,  bids 
farewell  to  life  in  those  affecting  lines  : — 

Thus  yields  the  cedar  to  the  axe's  edge, 
Whose  arms  gave  shelter  to  the  princely  eagle, 
Under  whose  shade  the  ramping  lion  slept, 
Whose  top  branch  over-peered  Jove's  spreading  tree, 
And  kept  low  shrubs  from  winter's  powerful  wind. 

One  is  always  inclined  to  attribute  special  local 
knowledge  to  Shakespeare,  whether  it  be  of  Lampedusa 
in  the  Gulf  of  Tunis,  or  of  the  remains  of  the  Middlesex 
forest ;  but  if  such  lines  ever  came  into  Keats's  mind  as 
he  wandered  among  these  woods,  the  frequency  of  cedar 
and  of  yew  trees  among  the  oaks  in  all  the  copses  here 
must  have  struck  him  ;  while  the  names,  not  perhaps  so 


KEATS  309 

well  understood  then  as  they  are  now,  may  have  recalled 
the  next  lines  : — 

My  parks,  my  walks,  my  manors  that  I  had, 
Even  now  forsake  me  ;  and,  of  all  my  lands, 
Is  nothing  left  me,  but  my  body's  length. 

It  is  still,  in  spite  of  the  Enclosure  Act  of  1777, 
which  had  only  begun  to  take  effect  when  Keats  walked 
here,  full  of  sylvan  scenery.  Beech  Hill  Park,  of  some 
twenty  acres,  is  now  being  divided  into  building  lots ; 
but  much  more  remains,  and  Trent  Park  is  almost 
untouched  and  full  of  wild  tracts.  "  Along  the  Ridge 
Road,"  says  Thorne,  "  and  from  the  higher  parts  gener- 
ally, alike  from  the  open  ways  and  from  Trent  Park, 
there  are  very  wide  prospects  over  Epping  Forest  to 
the  Kent  hills,  and  across  Hertfordshire  and  Middlesex 
to  Bucks  and  Berks."  It  is  hardly  possible  to  believe 
we  are  so  near  London  ;  yet  this  glorious  region,  so  full 
both  of  historical  and  poetical  associations,  as  well  as  of 
the  best  of  that  "  park  scenery  "  which  forms  the  great 
and  peculiar  boast  of  English  landscape,  is  almost 
unknown  to  the  modern  tourist. 

Trent  Park  is  still  untouched,  and  contains  what  is 
called  the  "  Rough  Lot,"  a  piece  of  the  primeval  forest. 
The  lake  is  of  some  three  or  four  acres.  Camlet  Moat, 
which  Sir  Walter  Scott  mentions  in  The  Fortunes  of 
Nigel,  seems  to  have  been  the  site  of  an  ancient  "  moated 
grange."  Of  this  Scott  sums  up  the  scenery  :  "  A  wild 
woodland  prospect  led  the  eye  at  various  points  through 


310  POETS'  COUNTRY 

broad  and  apparently  interminable  alleys  meeting  at 
this  point  as  from  a  common  centre."  The  lake  must 
have  been  in  Keats's  mind  when  he  wrote  La  Belle 
Dame  Sans  Merci : — 

O  what  can  ail  thee,  wretched  wight, 

Alone  and  palely  loitering  ? 
The  sedge  is  withered  from  the  lake, 

And  no  birds  sing. 

The  ballad  was  suggested  to  Keats  by  an  old  poem 
bearing  the  same  title,  which  is  to  be  found  in  Chaucer, 
being,  in  fact,  a  translation  from  the  French  of  Alain 
Chartier. 

Of  the  many  passages  which  recall  Keats's  know- 
ledge of  the  more  remote  shades  of  the  old  Chase, 
perhaps  some  of  the  lines  near  the  beginning  of 
Hyperion  are  the  most  vivid  : — 

As  when,  upon  a  tranced  summer  night, 
Those  green-rob'd  senators  of  mighty  woods, 
Tall  oaks,  branch-charmed  by  the  earnest  stars, 
Dream,  and  so  dream  all  night  without  a  stir, 
Save  from  one  gradual  solitary  gust 
Which  comes  upon  the  silence,  and  dies  off, 
As  if  the  ebbing  air  had  but  one  wave. 

Lovers  of  Keats's  poetry  will  recall  many  other 
passages  in  which  the  scenery  of  Enfield  Chase  is 
mentioned,  alluded  to,  or  directly  described.  The  only 
lake  within  many  miles  of  London  which  will  answer 
to  the  brief  lines  quoted  above  is  that  which  still 
exists  in  Trent  Park,  and  which  probably  existed  long 
before  Trent  Park  itself.  At  the  final  division  of  the 


KEATS  311 

Chase  among  the  commoners  it  was  found  that  there 
were  more  than  eight  thousand  acres  to  be  appropriated. 
In  the  reign  of  George  III.  the  advantages  of  open 
spaces  so  near  London  had  not  become  apparent,  and, 
as  the  King  himself  is  said  to  have  observed,  sheep  are 
more  profitable  than  deer.  The  royal  share  of  Enfield 
Chase  consisted  of  3200  acres,  while  a  thousand  were 
assigned  to  South  Mimms,  two  hundred  and  forty  to 
Hadley,  and  twelve  hundred  to  Edmonton.  There 
remained  seventeen  hundred  for  Enfield,  but  many 
years  elapsed  before  anything  very  definite  was  done  to 
settle  these  divisions  and  to  build  farmhouses  or  such 
mansions  as  Trent.  The  first  of  the  so-called  "  improve- 
ments," according  to  Lysons,  who  wrote  in  1811,  after 
Keats  had  left  Clarke's  school  and  been  apprenticed  at 
Edmonton,  were  unsuccessful.  "  It  was  some  years 
before  any  great  progress  was  made."  The  principal 
obstacle  was  the  difficulty  of  clearing  away  the  wood. 
It  is  melancholy,  to  say  the  least,  to  read  of  this  lovely 
forest  tract  being  treated  as  a  settler  on  the  Saskatchewan 
would  treat  his  backwoods.  The  modern  parishes  all 
round — Finsbury,  Wood  Green,  Edmonton,  and  Enfield 
among  others — have  carefully  preserved  and  laid  out 
to  the  best  advantage  the  portions  of  "  common  land  " 
which  remained  to  them  from  Hornsey  Wood  and  the 
other  relics  of  the  mediaeval  forest ;  but  no  effort  of 
landscape-gardening  can  make  up  to  us  what  we  lost  in 
1777. 

Lysons  tells  us  that  "the  common  rights,  as  defined 


312  POETS'  COUNTRY 

in  the  survey  of  1650,  were  herbage,  mastage  for  swine, 
green  boughs  to  garnish  houses,  thorns  for  fences,  and 
crabs  and  acorns  gathered  under  the  trees" — a  defini- 
tion which  draws  a  picture  for  us  in  itself.  The  trim 
parks  with  their  neat  band-stands,  which  we  are  now 
endeavouring  everywhere  to  secure,  with  our  modern 
desire  for  open  spaces  and  hygiene,  can  never  take  the 
place  of 

The  grass,  the  thicket,  and  the  fruit-tree  wild ; 
White  hawthorn,  and  the  pastoral  eglantine ; 
Fast-fading  violets  covered  up  in  leaves ; 

And  mid-May's  eldest  child, 
The  coming  musk-rose,  full  of  dewy  wine, 

The  murmurous  haunt  of  flies  on  summer  eves. 

With  these  lines  from  the  Ode  to  a  Nightingale  we 
may  fitly  conclude,  for  it  must  have  been  in  these  woods 
that  John  Keats,  still  young,  still  full  of  hope,  still 
healthy  and  untouched  by  disease,  first  heard  the  song 
which  inspired  his  finest  lyric. 

Thou  wast  not  born  for  death,  immortal  bird ! 

may  be  applied  to  the  poet.  His  "  plaintive  anthem 
fades," 

Past  the  near  meadows,  over  the  still  stream, 
Up  the  hill-side ;  and  now  'tis  buried  deep 
In  the  next  valley-glades. 


MILLFIELD   LANE,    HIGHGATE 

Auotlier  resort  of  Keats,  and  sometimes  called  "  Poet's 
Lane."  It  was  also  a  favourite  walk  of  Coleridge's.  Here 
lie  is  said  to  have  met  Keats.  A  part  of  it  is  still  as  it  was 
in  their  time.  (See  p.  307.) 


EDMUND  SPENSER  AT  PENSHURST 

THE  Wars  of  the  Roses  were  past ;  peace  and  peaceful 
employments  prevailed  all  over  England.  The  sad 
days,  first  of  strife  and  cruelty,  then  of  fear  and  fiery 
persecution,  were  gone  by,  and  men  who  had  been  born 
in  the  midst  of  the  battles'  din  and  had  grown  up  in 
daily  contentions,  whether  of  warriors  or  of  polemical 
discussions,  and  "  hating  each  other  for  the  love  of  God," 
found  themselves  able  to  settle  down  in  security  in 
houses  without  moats  or  battlements.  In  these  com- 
paratively happy  days  it  was  that  a  new  style  of  archi- 
tecture sprang  up.  The  greatest  in  the  land  vied  with 
each  other  in  designing  comely  palaces,  and  if  Cecil  had 
not  made  himself  famous  for  his  conduct  of  the  affairs 
of  State,  he  would  be  known  as  the  first  to  build  and 
the  author  of  such  piles  as  Burghley,  Theobalds,  and 
Cobham.  The  palaces  of  Richard  II.  and  the  days 
before  him  had  been  fortified  castles.  Even  the  poetry 
of  that  time  and  the  book-lore  which  has  bequeathed  to 
us  such  rich  illuminations,  besides  the  perfection  to 
which  the  art  of  portrait-painting  and  sculpture  had 
attained,  were  drowned  in  the  blood  of  the  noblest 

313 


314  POETS'  COUNTRY 

families.      Among   the   arts  which  perished  then  was 
poetry.     When  Chaucer  died  in  1400  he  left  no  heir,  no 
successor,  no  school  that  could  continue  his  song  in  the 
noise  and  confusion  of  the  Wars  of  the  Roses.     With 
The  spacious  times  of  Great  Elizabeth 

all  was  changed,  and  men  might  have  asked,  and  perhaps 
did  ask,  each  other,  "  Is  no  one  coming  to  awaken  for  us 
once  more  the  sound  of  Chaucer's  lyre  ? "  But  the  only 
answer  could  have  been  that  of  the  Latin  proverb, 
"  Poeta  nascitur  non  fit,"  and  they  had  to  wait,  but  not 
for  long.  The  palace  was  being  prepared,  and  so  was 
the  poet.  Queen  Elizabeth  ascended  the  throne  on  the 
17th  November  1558,  and  already  Edmund  Spenser 
was  five  or  six  years  old.  Born  in  what  would  seem 
now  the  unpoetic  region  of  East  Smithfield,  he  was 
surrounded  in  those  days  by  what  must  have  been  one 
of  the  more  pleasing  and  rural  of  the  suburbs  of  London. 
John  Stow,  who  was  some  five-and-twenty  years  the 
senior  of  the  future  poet,  was  himself  about  this  time 
engaged  on  his  edition  of  Chaucer.  He  has  left  a 
pleasant  account  of  the  region  beyond  East  Smithfield  in 
the  early  days  of  Elizabeth.  He  remembered  the  house 
of  the  nuns,  near  the  small  parish  church  of  "  St. 
Trinities  "  Minories,  and  speaks  of  the  garden  plots  and 
other  alterations  in  progress.  He  adds  : 

Near  adjoining  to  this  abbey,  on  the  south  side  thereof,  was 
sometime  a  farm  belonging  to  the  said  nunnery ;  at  the  which  farm 
I  myself  in  my  youth  have  fetched  many  a  halfpennyworth  of  milk, 
and  never  had  less  than  three  ale  pints  for  a  halfpenny  in  the 


SPENSER  315 

summer,  nor  less  than  one  ale  quart  for  a  halfpenny  in  the  winter, 
always  hot  from  the  kine,  as  the  same  was  milked  and  strained. 
One  Trolop,  and  afterwards  Goodman,  were  the  farmers  there,  and 
had  thirty  or  forty  kine  to  the  pail. 

Looking  in  the  opposite  direction,  he  saw  the  old  city 
walls  and  their  moat,  with  Aldgate  a  little  farther  north, 
and  the  red-tiled  roofs  above  the  battlements,  with  the 
mighty  steeple  of  old  St.  Paul's,  the  tallest  building  at 
that  time  extant,  being  524  feet  high,  but  destined  to  be 
destroyed  by  fire  while  Spenser  was  a  boy,  namely,  in 
1561.  It  must  have  been  round  East  Smithfield  that 
Spenser  acquired  the  love  of  gardens  in  which  he  vies 
with  Chaucer.  Just  within  Aldgate  were  the  gardens 
which  Lord  Walden  had  planted  in  the  time  of  the 
Queen's  father,  and  at  Stepney,  Colet,  Wentworth,  and 
their  neighbours  all  were  learning  and  practising  horti- 
culture with  one  consent.  It  was  to  his  connection  with 
Nowell,  who  was  one  of  Colet's  successors  as  Dean  of 
St.  Paul's,  that  the  youthful  Edmund  went  to  the  then 
recently  established  Merchant  Taylors'  school,  and  his 
attainment  of  the  place  of  principal  scholar  led  to  his 
being  sent  up  to  Pembroke  Hall  at  Cambridge.  There 
it  would  seem  that  his  cultivation  of  the  art  of  verse- 
writing  interfered  with  his  University  progress,  while  it 
introduced  him  to  the  man  who  chiefly  influenced  his 
subsequent  career.  This  was  Philip  Sidney. 

About  Sidney,  from  some  charm  of  manner  and  of 
personal  merit  which,  even  more  than  his  high  position 
at  the  Court  of  the  great  queen,  gave  him  influence, 


316  POETS'  COUNTRY 

there  gathered  many  young  men  who,  like  himself, 
sought  more  in  learning  than  mere  pedantry.  Sidney  was 
especially  anxious  to  improve  the  language,  and  thought 
to  do  so  by  introducing  some  system  of  prosody  akin  to 
that  of  quantitative  Latin  and  Greek.  Spenser,  on  the 
other  hand,  had  by  practice  attained  to  great  facility  in 
the  use  of  rhyme,  and  was  unwilling  to  throw  aside  an 
accomplishment  which  had  been  acquired  not  without 
labour.  They  differed  amicably,  and  in  the  contro- 
versies that  ensued,  while  Hooker  was  working  at  prose 
and  Harvey  at  blank  verse,  and  others  of  the  friends 
who  gathered  about  Sidney  and  his  family  at  various 
literary  questions,  there  was  no  acrimony,  but  all  were 
anxious  for  improvement.  It  was  the  glory  of  Spenser  to 
take  up  the  language  where  Chaucer  had  laid  it  down. 
Some  feeling  he  had  that,  though  more  than  a  century  and 
a  half  had  elapsed,  and  though  the  English  of  the  culti- 
vated classes  had  altered,  the  language  of  poetry  must  not 
be  too  modern,  the  transition  between  the  Canterbury 
Tales  and  the  Faerie  Queene  must  not  be  too  sudden. 
He  seems  even  in  his  earliest  verses  to  have  affected  anti- 
quated words  and  expressions,  and  even  old-fashioned 
spelling.  It  may  be  that  they  accorded  best  with  the 
houses  he  loved  best,  with  the  ancient  scenes  which  are 
reflected  so  fondly  in  his  poetry.  The  country  which 
he  made  most  intimately  his  own  was  that  part  of  Kent 
which  lies  on  the  Medway  and  on  its  upper  waters,  the 
Eden.  Here,  within  a  few  miles  of  each  other,  were 
some  of  the  beautiful  views  which  are  called  up  when 


SPENSER  317 

we  name  Hever  and  Rochester,  Chiddingstone  and 
Leeds,  but  above  all  Penshurst.  Sidney  must  have 
taken  his  friend  to  Penshurst  before  he  wrote  the 
Shepherds  Calendar.  The  scenery  is  reflected  in  all 
the  twelve  poems,  closely  in  some,  more  vaguely  in 
others,  but  all  breathe  of  those  fair  valleys,  and  are 
peopled,  not  by  the  peasants  only,  but  also  by  memories 
and  allusions  and  such  visions  as  an  imaginative  youth 
could  not  but  summon  up  at  the  sight  of  ancient 
cromlechs,  long,  mysterious  avenues  of  cyclopean 
stones,  each  with  its  legend,  and  venerable  oaks,  full  of 
deep  shadows  and  echoing  with  forest  sounds,  the  songs 
of  birds,  or  nightly  meanings.  He  must  have  visited 
these  regions  also  in  winter.  The  first  Eclogue  speaks 
of  the  sad  season  of  the  year,  the  frosty  ground,  and  the 
frozen  trees  : — 

Such  rage  as  winter's  ringeth  in  my  heart, 

My  life-blood  freezing  with  unkindly  cold 

Such  stormy  stores  do  breed  my  baleful  smart : 

As  if  my  years  were  waste  and  waxen  old, 

And  yet,  alas !  but  now  my  spring  be  gone  (begun) 

And  yet,  alas !  it  is  already  done. 

You  naked  trees,  whose  shady  leaves  are  lost, 
Wherein  the  birds  were  wont  to  build  their  bower, 
And  now  are  clothed  with  moss  and  hoary  frost 
Instead  of  blossoms,  wherewith  your  buds  did  flower ; 
I  see  your  teares  that  from  your  boughs  do  rain, 
Whose  drops  in  dreary  icicles  remain. 

But,  beautiful  as  the  country  is  in  winter  and 
comparative  sadness,  summer  is  the  poet's  season ;  and 
most  of  the  Shepherd's  Calendar  recites  the  pleasure  and 


318  POETS'  COUNTRY 

constantly  varying  experiences  of  the  men  who  loved 
the  woods  and  the  fields,  the  hills  and  the  growing  corn, 
and  the  simple  folk  who  peopled  them.  The  happy 
time  begins  early.  The  Eclogue  for  April  is  full  of  the 
greatness  of  the  queen  who 

Sits  upon  the  grassy  green, 

and  is  obviously  meant  for  Queen  Elizabeth  : — 

Upon  her  head  a  crimson  coronet 
With  damask  roses  and  daffodillies  set : 

Bay  leaves  between 

And  primroses  green 
Embellish  the  white  violet. 

In  May  we  have  the  fable  of  the  Fox  and  the  Kid, 
and  June  tells  the  story  of  the  poet's  ill  success  in  his 
love-making : — 

Though  could  I  sing  of  love  and  tune  my  pipe 
Unto  my  plaintive  pleas  in  verses  made : 
Though  would  I  seek  for  queen  apples  unripe 
To  give  my  Rosalind  ;  and  hi  Summer's  shade 
Dight  gaudy  garlands  was  my  common  trade, 
To  crown  her  golden  locks  :  but  years  more  ripe, 
And  loss  of  her  whose  love  as  life  I  weighed, 
These  weary  wanton  toys  away  did  wipe. 

In  the  Fourth  Book  of  the  Faerie  Queene  there  is 
a  list  of  English  rivers  in  which  the  Thames  and  the 
Medway  are  married  : — 

Old  Cybele,  arrayed  with  pompous  pride, 
Wearing  a  diadem,  embattled  wide 


SPENSER  319 

With  hundred  turrets,  like  a  Turribant : 
With  such  an  one  was  Thames  beautifide ; 
That  was  to  weet  the  famous  Troynavant, 
In  which  her  kingdomes  throne  is  chiefly  resiant. 

The  Thames  is  a  favourite  with  Spenser  both  here 
and  in  the  list  of  English  rivers ;  and  the  wedding  is 
just  what  we  might  expect  from  the  voyagers.  We 
might  expect  to  meet  the  name  of  the  Medway  just  as 
we  expect  to  meet  the  name  of  Penshurst,  but  the 
house  of  his  friend  is  omitted,  though  many  passages 
seem  to  allude  to  it.  Among  these,  at  the  Ninth  Canto 
of  the  Faerie  Queene,  we  have  the  castle  of  Alma,  who 
shows  her  visitor  the  wall,  the  gates,  the  porch,  and  the 
stately  hall,  with  its  furniture,  the  Steward  with  his 
red  robe  and  white  rod, 

And  in  demeanure  sober,  and  in  counsell  sage. 

There  is  much  more  descriptive  of  such  a  house  as 
Penshurst,  but  no  mention  by  name. 

The  best  way  from  London,  and  especially  from 
that  part  of  London  which  we  may  suppose  Spenser 
still  inhabited  when  he  was  not  at  Cambridge,  to 
Penshurst  must  have  been  by  the  Thames  first  to 
Rochester,  and  then  by  the  Medway.  The  name  of 
the  Medway  is  itself  poetical,  the  Mead  Wye,  a 
mixture  of  English  and  Welsh.  It  is  navigable  to 
boats  far  beyond  the  Meads  town,  corrupted  into 
Maidstone,  a  name  sufficiently  descriptive,  and  when  it 
ceases  to  be  tidal  and  brackish  it  becomes  the  Eden, 
but  this  is  above  Penshurst,  where 


320  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Has  the  salt  Medway  his  source 

Wherein  the  Nymph  es  doe  bathe  : 

The  salt  Medway  that  trickling  streames 
Adown  the  dales  of  Kent. 

We  can  easily  imagine  that  after  a  discussion  at 
Leicester  House,  Sidney  and  Spenser  would  take  a 
boat  at  Essex  Stairs,  in  the  Outer  Temple,  and,  float- 
ing down  on  the  tide,  reach  the  Medway  in  time  to 
float  up  to  Penshurst,  among  the  "dales  of  Kent." 
The  scenery  along  nearly  all  the  usual  route  by  boat  is 
beautiful  still.  In  the  days  of  Elizabeth  it  must  have 
been  far  finer.  At  Tilbury,  on  the  left,  where  now 
there  are  villages  of  small  houses,  stacks  of  factory 
chimneys,  and  great  docks  full  of  ocean  steamers,  there 
were  then  only  the  red-brick  buildings  of  the  fort  to 
which  in  a  later  century  Wren  was  to  add  the 
picturesque  stone  gateway.  Then  rounding  the  wide 
low  green  fields  bordering  the  Thames  on  the  right, 
they  would  enter  the  Medway  at  the  Nore,  or  "New 
Weir,"  old  already  by  the  time  of  the  Norman  Conquest. 
Next  they  would  see  Cobham,  on  the  right  beyond 
Strood,  and  the  frowning  mass  of  Rochester  Castle  on 
the  left.  The  river  was  still  navigable  and  tidal,  and 
would  probably  be  the  easiest  way  to  Penshurst  from 
Rochester,  certainly  as  far  as  Maidstone.  On  the  height 
above  Aylesford  they  might  descry  the  curious  outline 
of  Kit's  Coty  House,  and  on  the  other  side  Southland 
Church,  now  called  Snodland,  where  the  epitaph  on 
William  Palmer — 

Palmers  all  my  fathers  were — 


SPENSER  321 

was  still  new,  and  where  another  cromlech,  Holborough, 
looked  across  the  valley  towards  Kit's  Coty  House, 
both  forming  parts  of  the  long  series  of  stone  monu- 
ments reaching  away  to  the  westward  nearly  as  far  as 
Wrotham.  All  such  things,  with  their  mysterious 
significance,  would  be  noted  by  the  young  poet  as  he 
floated  along  and  perhaps  began  to  frame  his  episode  of 
the  marriage  of  the  Thames  and  the  Medway.  The 
voyage  ended  is  well  described  in  the  last  verse  of  the 
First  Book  of  the  Faerie  Queene.  We  seem  to  see  the 
safe  arrival  of  the  travellers  or  voyagers  from  London  : 

Now,  strike  your  sailes,  yee  jolly  Mariners, 
For  we  be  come  unto  a  quiet  rode, 
Where  we  must  land  some  of  our  passengers. 
And  light  this  weary  vessell  of  her  lode  : 
Here  she  awhile  may  make  her  safe  abode, 
Till  she  repaired  have  her  tackles  spent, 
And  wants  supplide  ;  and  then  againe  abroad 
On  the  long  voiage  whereto  she  is  bent  : 
Well  may  she  speede,  and  fairely  finish  her  intent ! 

It  would  be  but  too  easy  to  find  descriptions  of 
Sidney's  birthplace  in  the  works  of  contemporary 
writers.  Spenser,  as  we  have  observed,  does  not 
mention  it  by  name,  but  Ben  Jonson  says,  in  The 
Forest, 

Thou  are  not,  Penshurst,  built  to  envious  shew, 

and  goes  on 

But  stan'st  an  ancient  pile  ; 

and  Spenser  must  have  had  it  in  his  mind  in  many 

Y 


322  POETS'  COUNTRY 

passages  which  answer  best  to  it  and  to  no  other.  For 
example,  we  take  the  description  in  the  Third  Book  of 
the  Faerie  Queene : — 

At  last,  as  nigh  out  of  the  wood  she  came, 
A  stately  Castle  farre  away  she  spyde, 
To  which  her  steps  directly  she  did  frame. 
That  Castle  was  most  goodlie  edifyde, 
And  plac'd  for  pleasure  nigh  that  forrest  syde  : 
But  faire  before  the  gate  a  spatious  Plaine, 
Mantled  with  greene,  itself  did  spredden  wide. 

Sidney's  death  and  that  of  Sidney's  father,  Sir 
Henry,  President  of  Wales  and  Viceroy  of  Ireland, 
occurred  in  the  same  year,  1586.  A  portion  of 
Penshurst  is  still  named  the  President's  Court.  The 
death  of  the  friend  of  his  youth,  after  lingering  long 
from  a  wound  received  at  Zutphen,  must  have  been  a 
sad  blow  to  Spenser.  Sidney  never  saw  the  printed 
Faerie  Queene.,  although,  like  Raleigh,  he  may  have 
seen  such  parts  as  were  written  out  four  years  before, 
that  is  before  Raleigh's  journey  to  Ireland,  when  he 
visited  Spenser  at  Kilcolman.  Much  of  the  poet's 
life  there  must  have  been  pure  exile,  though  the 
Blackwater,  which  he  calls  "  swift  Awin  Duff,"  is, 
at  Lismore  especially,  reckoned  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  rivers  in  Ireland.  Munster  was  about  as  far 
from  Kent  in  those  days  as  New  Zealand  is  now, 
reckoning  by  days'  journeys.  When  the  end  of  all  his 
hopes  came,  when  his  castle  had  been  burnt  and  his 
child  murdered,  he  and  his  wife  escaped  to  London, 


SPENSER  323 

and  we,  strictly  speaking,  hear  no  more  of  him. 
According  to  the  strange  legend  ascribed  to  Ben 
Jonson,  he  died  "  for  lake  of  bread "  at  King  Street, 
AVestminster,  in  January  1599,  a  story  absolutely 
refused  by  Dean  Church  in  his  admirable  biography. 
The  Dean,  however,  sums  up  the  facts  thus :  "  The 
first  of  English  poets  perished  miserably  and  pre- 
maturely." Jonson  added  to  the  first  part  of  his  tale 
one  which  we  may  accept.  The  Earl  of  Essex  sent 
him  "twenty  pieces,"  which  the  dying  poet  rejected, 
saying  bitterly  he  had  no  time  to  spend  them.  He  was 
buried  near  the  tomb  of  Chaucer  in  what  is  now  known 
as  the  Poets'  Corner  of  Westminster  Abbey,  and  the 
assembly  of  literary  men  and  poets  gathered  at  the 
funeral  wrote  elegies  and  epitaphs  which  they  threw 
with  their  pens  into  his  grave. 

Spenser's  family  was  undoubtedly  connected  with 
the  Northamptonshire  family  of  Spencer.  The  differ- 
ence of  a  single  letter  in  the  uncertain  spelling  of  the 
sixteenth  century  did  not  signify  much.  They  were 
wealthy  graziers  in  the  midland  counties  ;  two  of  them, 
who  would  seem  to  have  been  in  the  great  staple  wool 
trade,  were  Lord  Mayors  in  1527  and  1594.  The  poet's 
branch  was  long  before  of  some  local  consideration  in 
East  Lancashire  ;  but,  though  Edmund  was  acquainted 
with  heraldry,  we  are  not  informed  as  to  his  coat  of 
arms.  This  has  lately  been  a  matter  of  some  con- 
troversy, the  two  Lord  Mayors  using  coats  not  in  the 
least  resembling  those  now  borne  by  the  Spencers  of 


324  POETS'  COUNTRY 

Althorpe.  The  sixteenth  century  heralds  assigned  to 
this  family  the  arms  of  the  long  extinct  Despencers. 
Mr.  Round  in  his  Peerage  Studies  shows  plainly  that 
in  1504  a  coat  more  or  less  varied  from  that  of  the 
London  aldermen  was  granted  to  John  Spencer  of 
Althorpe ;  and  as  Mr.  Round  remarks,  "  the  fess 
between  six  seamews'  heads "  is  hostile  to  the  claim 
that  the  family  was  already  entitled  to  the  arms  of  the 
baronial  Despencers.  "The  first  effigy  on  which  is 
found  the  differenced  coat  of  the  baronial  Despencers 
is  that  of  Sir  John  Spencer,  who  died  in  1586."  It  is 
therefore  unlikely  that  Edmund,  though  he  claimed 
close  affinity  with  the  subsequently  ennobled  Spencers 
of  Althorpe,  had  any  more  right  than  they  to  the 
curious  and  complicated  shield  of  the  Earls  of 
Winchester  and  of  Gloucester  in  the  fourteenth 
century.  Descendants  of  the  poet  still  exist,  and  the 
Dictionary  of  National  Biography  mentions  Mr. 
Edmund  Spenser  Tiddeman,  rector  of  West  Hanning- 
field,  as  the  present  representative  of  the  family. 


THOMAS   MOORE    IN   WICKLOW 

THOMAS  MOORE  was  born  to  a  grocer  and  his  wife  in 
Aungier  Street,  Dublin,  in  1779.  In  1794  he  entered 
Trinity  College,  the  penal  laws  against  the  Roman 
Catholics  having  at  this  time  been  somewhat  relaxed, 
though  he  was  not  allowed  to  hold  the  scholarship  he 
had  won.  Five  years  later  he  was  entered  at  the 
Middle  Temple,  but  cannot  be  said  to  have  ever 
seriously  studied  law.  He  had  begun  to  make  himself 
known  as  a  lyric  poet  while  he  was  still  little  more  than 
a  boy.  His  friendship  with  Robert  Emmet  is  celebrated 
in  such  verses  as  O  breathe  not  his  Name  and  Let  Erin 
remember  the  Days  of  Old.  But  his  poetical  powers 
showed  themselves  more  clearly  when  he  came  to 
speak  of  Emmet's  love  for  Sarah  Curran,  and  probably 
never  rose  higher  than  in  the  touching  lines  :— 

She  sings  the  wild  songs  of  her  dear  native  plains, 
Every  note  which  he  loved  awaking  ; — 

Ah !  little  they  think  who  delight  in  her  strains 
How  the  heart  of  the  Minstrel  is  breaking. 

Moore's  fame  was  sudden  and  early,  but  never 
flagged  while  he  lived.  His  verses  are  easily  criticised, 
and  their  fall  into  oblivion  has  been  prophesied  from 

325 


326  POETS'  COUNTRY 

the  first ;  but  many  of  them  still  live,  and  others,  like 
Oft  in  the  Stilly  Night  and  Flow  on,  thou  Shining 
River,  seem  to  wake  up  at  irregular  intervals,  when 
perhaps  some  famous  musician  revives  their  popularity, 
or  they  are  found,  like  The  Last  Rose  of  Summer, 
forming  the  motive  of  a  fashionable  opera.  He  was 
fortunate  in  his  prolonged  friendship  with  Lord  Moira, 
afterwards  Marquis  of  Hastings,  who  favoured  him  for 
many  years  and  practically  caused  him  to  settle  in 
England  ;  but  by  obtaining  for  the  poet  the  uncongenial 
office  of  Admiralty  Registrar  of  Bermuda  he  gave 
Moore  an  opportunity  of  seeing  the  world.  The  profits 
of  this  office  were  considerable,  especially  in  time  of 
war ;  but  when  Moore  obtained  leave  to  appoint  a 
deputy  and  to  return  home  himself,  he  took  a  step 
which  involved  him  in  endless  complications,  and  the 
money  troubles  which  ensued  were  most  galling  to  his 
punctilious  sense  of  honour.  They  served  one  purpose, 
however,  which  is  not  to  be  wholly  regretted,  namely,  by 
showing  how  independent  and  exact  even  a  poet  could 
be ;  while,  though  himself  at  the  height  of  his  fame, 
earning  sums  which  vie  with  those  offered  to  Scott  or 
Byron,  he  was  living  almost  in  penury  to  pay  off  his 
debts  to  the  Treasury. 

It  would  scarcely  be  correct  to  describe  Thomas 
Moore  as  a  great  poet.  It  would  be  at  least  equally 
incorrect  to  call  him  a  great  musician.  Yet  his  poetry 
and  his  music  have  reached  and  influenced,  and,  above 
all,  given  pleasure  to  thousands  whose  lives  might  other- 


MOORE  327 

wise  be  considered  to  lie  wholly  beyond  the  reach  of 
either  the  one  or  the  other.  The  secret  of  this  wide- 
spread influence  is  perhaps  to  be  found  in  his  versatility. 
He  undoubtedly  contrived,  combining  poetry  and 
music,  more  nearly  than  any  of  his  countrymen  to 
awaken  for  Ireland  a  modest  proportion  of  the  same 
kind  of  interest  that  Sir  Walter  Scott  had  so 
abundantly  shed  over  Scotland.  It  is  a  commonplace 
to  say  he  was  influenced  by  the  scenery  which  he 
constantly  visited  while  he  remained  at  home,  but  he 
was  also  influenced,  perhaps  even  more  strongly,  by 
the  discovery,  as  it  may  be  called,  of  popular  music, 
then  something  quite  novel  and  unstudied.  Musicians 
write  learnedly  about  the  so-called  pentatonic  scale 
and  about  such  mysteries  to  the  unmusical  as  major 
sevenths  and  superfluous  seconds ;  but  in  the  days  of 
Moore's  youth  it  showed  something  little  short  of 
genius  that  he  was  able  to  catch  these  wild  airs  and  in 
a  sense  to  tame  them  without  allowing  civilisation  to 
destroy  their  natural  charm.  In  this  art,  a  difficult  one, 
as  they  know  best  who  have  tried  to  secure  the  best 
and  most  characteristic  form  of  a  popular  tune  where 
each  performer  has  his  own  version,  Moore  excelled 
In  Sir  John  Stevenson's  settings  of  the  Irish  Melodies 
he  constantly  shows  a  desire  to  correct  irregularities, 
not  perceiving  how  much  of  the  charm  is  thereby  lost. 
Moore  never  did  this,  and  though  he  was  no  performer, 
though  he  had  hardly  any  voice,  he  yet  contrived  to 
please  the  most  fastidious  audiences,  and  when  he  sang 


328  POETS'  COUNTRY 

a  pathetic  air  he  is  described  by  many  who  heard  him 
as  able  to  affect  even  to  tears  people  who  might  have 
been  thought  impervious  to  sentiment. 

Visitors  to  Ireland  for  the  first  time,  if  bent  solely 
on  pleasure  or  on  seeking  beautiful  landscape,  do  well 
to  approach  the  east  coast  by  one  of  the  longer  sea- 
routes.  There  is  much  difference  between  the  scenery 
of  the  north  and  that  which  Moore  made  more  peculiarly 
his  own.  Coming  from  the  Clyde,  among  the  western 
isles,  the  voyager  finds  himself  in  a  turbulent  sea,  the 
Sound  of  Mull,  which  the  poet  calls  Moyle,  adopting 
the  Irish  spelling  in  the  Song  of  Fionnuala  : — 

Silent,  O  Moyle,  be  the  roar  of  thy  water, 
Break  not,  ye  breezes,  your  chain  of  repose, 

While,  murmuring  mournfully,  Lir's  lonely  daughter, 
Tells  to  the  night-star  her  tale  of  woes. 

The  Sound  of  Mull  is  seldom,  indeed,  still,  but  it 
is  a  frequent  experience  of  the  voyager  to  encounter 
a  solitary  swan  like  Fionnuala,  who  was  condemned 
by  some  supernatural  power  to  wander  here  in  the 
shape  of  a  wild  swan  throughout  the  ages  until  the 
coming  of  Christianity.  This  north-eastern  coast, 
which  is  annually  at  least  visited  by  flocks  of  swans, 
seeking  the  inlets  and  freshwater  lakes,  with  the  noble, 
prosaic,  and  busy  city  of  Belfast  in  the  background, 
forms  an  admirable  entrance  and  one  well  associated 
with  Moore.  The  very  simplicity  of  the  words  suits 
well  the  weird  legend,  and  the  plaintive  minor  air  rings 
in  our  ears  sometimes  for  days  : — 


THE  VALE   OF   AVOCA 

Moore's  Oak  in  the  Vale  of  Avoca,  under  which  it  is  said 
he  composed  The  Meeting  of  the  Waters  (the  junction  of  the 
Avonmore  and  the  Avoubeg),  has  perished  through  visitors 
cutting  away  portions  of  its  bark  as  mementoes  of  their 
visit. 


MOORE  329 

When  will  the  day-star,  mildly  springing, 

Warm  our  isle  with  peace  and  love  ? 
When  will  Heaven,  its  sweet  bells  ringing, 

Call  my  spirit  to  the  fields  above  ? 

Moore  owed  the  legend  to  Lady  Moira,  whose  residence 
was  near  Belfast. 

Still  more  closely  associated  with  the  poet  of  the 
Irish  Melodies  is  the  memory  of  another  approach  to 
the  coast.  This  is  from  a  Welsh  or  a  southern  English 
port.  In  fine  weather  a  steamer  or  yacht  encounters 
at  once  the  scenery  which  has  entitled  Ireland  to  be 
called  the  Emerald  Isle.  The  greenness  of  the  land- 
scape, of  the  mountains  as  well  as  of  the  meadows, 
strikes  a  foreigner  most  forcibly.  Nothing  is  to  be  seen 
like  it  on  the  shores  of  other  European  countries, 
except,  perhaps,  in  spring  at  or  near  Palma,  in  the 
Island  of  Majorca.  Here  in  Wexford  and  Wicklow 
the  verdure  is  perennial,  caused,  no  doubt,  partly  by 
the  humidity  of  the  climate,  so  that  "given  fine 
weather"  is  a  permanent  feature  in  every  sentence  of 
description,  like  "  the  ordnance  datum  "  in  measurements 
of  hills.  The  datum  of  a  clear  sky  is  very  needful 
where  we  want  to  find  blue  mountain  peaks  and  deep 
woods ;  but,  given  that,  a  great  many  visitors,  by  sea 
or  land,  have  agreed  with  Moore  that 

There  is  not  in  the  wide  world  a  valley  so  sweet 
As  that  vale  in  whose  bosom  the  bright  waters  meet, 

the   Meeting   of  the  Waters,  a   meeting  repeated   or 
imitated  a  little  farther  in  the  same  valley,  being  one 


330  POETS'  COUNTRY 

of  the  chief  features  of  a  beautiful  district.  Moore  has 
recorded  the  fact  of  his  visit  here  in  the  summer  of 
1807,  and  calls  the  rivers  the  Avon  and  the  Avoca. 
Barrow  and  others  have  pointed  out  the  existence  of  two 
meetings,  and  most  lovers  of  this  kind  of  scenery  prefer 
the  place  of  the  lower  confluence  to  that  which  is 
usually  pointed  out  as  the  subject  of  Moore's  little 
poem. 

This  district  is  essentially  Moore's  country ;  and  it 
seems  as  if  the  Irish  Melodies  are  the  echoes  of  these 
beautiful  but  in  no  sense  magnificent  hills.  They 
begin  very  near  Dublin,  and  extend  for  many  miles 
through  Wicklow,  everywhere  green  and  soft,  but  no- 
where rugged  or  imposing,  like  the  Mourne  Mountains 
or  those  of  Kerry.  While  he  remained  in  Ireland  he 
spent  much  time  among  them,  and  they  must  have 
always  dwelt  in  his  memory.  In  such  scenes  as  were 
uppermost  in  his  mind  when  he  wrote  some  of  his  most 
popular  songs,  many  "bits,"  as  artists  call  them,  occur 
which  seem  to  belong  to  this  part  of  Wicklow,  and  to 
no  other  region  in  our  islands.  There  is  finer  scenery, 
by  far,  in  Killarney  or  the  Mourne  Mountains  in  Down, 
or  among  the  dales  of  Antrim.  But  it  is  by  its  sweetness 
that  the  valley  on  the  southern  slopes  of  Douce  and 
Slieve  na  Poila,  the  Black  Mountains  and  the  Forked 
Hills,  or  Great  and  Little  Sugar-Loaf,  excels  them  all. 
The  views  from  these  heights  include  the  Channel  and 
the  little  blue  triangles,  peeping  over  the  eastern 
horizon,  which  mark  the  situation  of  Snowdon.  All  the 


MOORE  331 

favourite  resorts  of  the  modern  visitor  in  this  region 
may  be  found  without  any  great  exertion  within  the  few 
miles  which  stretch  from  Powerscourt  and  its  waterfall 
to  Shelton  Abbey,  beyond  the  farthest  of  the  Meetings. 
The  "Meeting"  is  that  of  the  Great  Avon,  or 
Avonmore,  with  the  Little  Avon,  or  Avonbeg.  The 
rival  meeting,  very  near  Shelton,  is  preferred  for  its 
beauty  by  people  who  admire  this  kind  of  scenery. 
The  first  junction  turns  the  two  Avons  into  the  Avoca  ; 
when  the  Avoca  is  about  to  pass  the  Wooden  Bridge, 
a  very  favourite  resort,  it  receives  two  small  rivers,  the 
Gold  Mines  and  the  Aughrim.  A  little  gold  has  been 
found  in  the  copper  ore  extracted  from  the  rocks  here, 
but  hardly  enough  to  pay  for  the  deterioration  of  the 
landscape  by  blasting  and  tall,  ungraceful  chimneys. 
The  return  cannot  have  been  such  as  Moore  tells  of 

When  Malachi  wore  the  collar  of  gold 
Which  he  won  from  the  proud  invader. 

A  railway  now  runs  through  the  valley,  where  Moore 
must  have  walked. 

At  every  turn  we  hear  his  name,  and  Moore's  Tree 
is  but  one  of  many  local  reminiscences  more  or  less 
authentic.  It  has  perished  through  visitors  cutting  the 
bark,  and  is  or  was  lately  a  leafless  skeleton.  Arklow, 
a  flourishing  little  seaport  with  a  cordite  factory,  is  on 
the  coast,  close  by. 

Crossing  from  the  Dublin  mountains  to  those  of 
Wicklow,  we  come  to  places  actually  mentioned  by 


332  POETS'  COUNTRY 

name,  to  others  mentioned  by  allusion,  and  to  an 
immense  number  which  owe  their  celebrity  as  much 
to  guides  and  guide-books  as  to  any  real  connection 
with  the  poet.  The  retrospective  views  as  we  ascend 
over  Dublin  Bay  and  then  over  Bray  Head,  Dalkey 
Island,  or,  in  the  opposite  direction,  to  Blessington  and 
the  tallest  of  the  Wicklow  range,  a  few  miles  inland, 
are  sufficiently  attractive,  but  the  distant  views,  like 
this,  soon  give  place  to  the  green  vales  and  wooded 
glens  which  are  most  characteristic  of  the  region.  The 
distance  retires  for  a  time,  and  what  there  is  to  see  is 
seen  close  at  hand.  Douce  (Dubh-ais),  the  Black 
Mountain,  and  the  Dargle  (Dear  gail),  the  little  red 
spot,  are  famous,  and  nearly  as  much  so  is  the  Glen  of 
the  Downs,  near  Dalgany,  with  the  Great  Sugar-Loaf 
and  some  fine  private  parks.  At  Luggala,  Moore 
picked  up  the  wild  air,  already  named  Luggala.,  to 
which  he  wrote  the  lines  : — 

No,  not  more  welcome  the  fairy  numbers 

Of  music  fall  on  the  sleeper's  ear, 
When,  half  awakening  from  fearful  slumbers, 

He  thinks  the  full  quire  of  Heaven  is  near. 

Here,  it  is  said  in  one  local  legend,  St.  Kevin,  who  is 
now  chiefly  to  be  heard  of  at  Glendalough,  first  settled 
in  a  cave  : — 

"  Here,  at  least,"  he  calmly  said, 
"  Woman  ne'er  shall  find  my  bed." 

Nevertheless,  he  was  driven  far  away  by  the  importunate 
Kathleen. 

Moore  was  particularly  quick  in  picking  up  these 


MOORE  333 

local  airs.  One  of  the  most  beautiful  of  them  all, 
however,  had  been  set  to  Robin  Adair  before  his  time. 
This  was  anciently  known  as  Aileen  Aroon,  and  Holly- 
brook,  the  seat  of  the  present  Sir  Robert  Adair-Hodson, 
often  pointed  out  as  the  scene  of  the  ballad,  is  on  the 
threshold  of  the  county.  Moore  profited  by  a  good 
example,  but  the  idea  of  uniting  modern  English 
words  systematically  with  old  Irish  airs  seems  to  have 
originated  with  Power,  a  musical  publisher,  about  1807. 
It  was  warmly  accepted  by  Moore,  to  whom  several 
collections  of  popular  melodies  were  familiar.  They 
had  been  taken  down  from  travelling  harpers  and  other 
itinerant  musicians  by  Bunting,  whose  collection  is  the 
best,  Lady  Morgan,  and  a  few  more,  but  differ  consider- 
ably among  themselves.  These  airs,  if  we  endeavour 
to  describe  them  in  unscientific  language,  had  one 
quality  in  common.  They  were  ah1,  with  a  few  trifling 
exceptions,  of  a  kind  which  could  be  played  on  an 
instrument  the  notes  of  which  sounded  the  five  black 
notes  of  a  piano.  These  five  notes  give  to  this  scale 
the  formidable  name  of  pentatonic,  and  will  be  recog- 
nised even  by  an  ear  unused  to  music  in  such  a  familiar 
tune  as  The  Last  Rose  of  Summer  or  The  Minstrel  JBoy. 
For  the  most  part  they  occur  in  the  Irish  collections, 
but  many  of  them  are  common  also  in  Scotland,  and  at 
least  one  was  well  known  for  many  generations  in 
England.  This  begins 

My  lodging  is  on  the  cold  ground, 
And  very  poor  is  my  fare, 


334  POETS'  COUNTRY 

in  the  English  version.  The  Irish  name  is  translated 
/  see  them  on  their  Winding  Way  in  the  collections. 
Moore  has  used  it  for 

Believe  me,  if  all  those  endearing  young  charms. 

Some  of  the  Irish  music  is  of  a  melancholy  and 
plaintive  character,  and  in  some  a  minor  key,  often 
with  a  curious  change  at  the  end,  is  used.  The  late 
Karl  Engel  describes  this  change  in  his  Study  of 
National  Music,  and  shows  that  the  pentatonic  scale 
is  that  of  G  flat  major  or  F  sharp  major.  In  the 
beautiful  air  known  as  The  Flowers  of  the  Forest, 
which  is  given  in  Engel's  Music  of  the  Most  Ancient 
Nations  as  typical  of  Scottish  melody,  he  remarks  on 
the  change  of  key  in  the  last  line,  and  something  of 
the  same  kind  occurs  in  Silent,  O  Moyle,  noticed  above. 
It  may  be  doubted  if  Moore  cared  at  all  for  these  and 
similar  niceties,  while  it  is  pretty  certain  that  his  chief 
guide  in  the  selection  of  tunes  was  that  they  should 
adhere  to  the  pentatonic  scale.  He  mentions  in  the 
original  preface  to  the  Irish  Melodies  that  it  was 
through  Bunting's  book  that  he  first  became  "acquainted 
with  the  beauties  of  our  native  music."  He  tells  us 
that  this  was  in  1797,  and  that  no  very  long  time 
elapsed  before  he  was  "  the  happy  proprietor  of  a  copy 
of  the  work,  and  though  never  regularly  instructed  in 
music,  could  play  over  the  airs  with  tolerable  facility  on 
the  piano."  The  names  in  Bunting's  book  are  very 
quaint.  One  is  The  Pretty  Girl  milking  her  Cow,  and 


MOORE  335 

another,  which  Moore  mentions  as  having  been  set  to 
Let  Erin  remember  the  Days  of  Old,  was  The  Red  Fox. 
A  third  is  The  Twisting  of  the  Rope,  and,  no  doubt, 
each  refers  to  a  song  the  words  of  which  were  in  the 
Irish  language. 

It  has  been  remarked  that  in  some  of  the  Irish 
Melodies  he  has  written  from  what  is  geographically 
an  English  standpoint.  Thus  in  the  lines,  otherwise 
descriptive  of  the  coast  here, 

How  dear  to  me  the  hour  when  daylight  dies. 
And  sunbeams  melt  along  the  silent  sea, 

there  is  a  reference  not  to  an  eastern  but  a  western 
view : — 

And,  as  I  watch  the  line  of  light,  that  plays 

Along  the  smooth  wave  t'ward  the  burning  west, 

I  long  to  tread  that  golden  path  of  rays, 

And  think  'twould  lead  to  some  bright  isle  of  rest. 

Some  of  the  poems  were  certainly  written  in 
England,  and  Moore  himself  teUs  us  that  When  first  I 
met  Thee  was  sung  "among  a  large  party  staying  at 
Chatsworth,"  where  it  was  specially  noticed  by  Byron. 
On  the  other  hand,  one  of  the  sweetest  of  the  Melodies 
is  set  to  words  which  answer  best  to  a  western  coast,  a 
coast  that  is  facing  east : — 

I  saw  from  the  beach,  when  the  morning  was  shining, 
A  bark  o'er  the  waters  move  gloriously  on  ; 

I  came  when  the  sun  o'er  that  beach  was  declining, 
The  bark  was  still  there,  but  the  waters  were  gone. 

The   distinct    allusions    to    this    coast    are,   however, 


336  POETS'  COUNTRY 

sufficiently  numerous.  The  legend  of  the  lake  whose 
gloomy  shore 

Skylark  never  warbled  o'er ; 

the  allusion  to  the  Wicklow  gold-mines  in 

Has  sorrow  thy  young  days  shaded  ; 

the  comparison  of  thoughts 

whose  source  is  hidden  and  high, 
Like  streams  that  come  from  heavenward  hills, 

and  many  other  lines  especially  among  the  early 
Melodies,  point  Wicklow  out  clearly  as  the  scenery 
which  most  powerfully  affected  the  mind  of  the  young- 
poet.  He  was  not  of  age  during  his  troubled  career  in 
Trinity  College,  and  we  can  well  understand  that  the 
comparative  quiet  of  these  mountains  was  a  delicious 
rest  after  days  of  strife  and  disappointment.  On  the 
one  hand  his  sympathies  were  stirred  by  the  suffer- 
ings of  many  of  his  friends  ;  and  on  the  other  the 
sequestered  valleys  and  woods  invited  him  to  throw 
politics  aside  and  devote  himself  to  poetry  and  music. 
As  soon  as  he  could  decently  do  so — and  Moore  was 
always  most  careful  of  the  proprieties,  indeed  scrupu- 
lously so  during  life — he  left  Ireland,  and  betook  himself 
to  the  careful  cultivation  of  his  powers  simply  as  a 
matter  of  business.  In  the  gay  world,  where  he  was 
highly  appreciated  almost  from  the  first,  he  continued 
to  live  with  an  honesty  remarkable  at  the  time. 
Another  interesting  characteristic  was  his  intense 


THE   BLACKWATER  AT  LISMORE   CASTLE 

The    Blackwater    at    Lismore    Castle,    Co.    Waterford, 
referred  to  in  the  Faerie  Queen  as 

Swift  Awniduff,  which  of  the  Englishman 
Is  called  Blackwater, 

is  perhaps  the  most  beautiful  river  in  Ireland.     It  has  heen 
described  as  the  Irish  Rhine. 


MOORE  337 

affection  for  his  mother,  who,  indeed,  seems  to  have 
deserved  his  regard.  - 

It  is  not  easy  to  criticise  Moore's  poetry.  So  much 
of  the  effect  of  his  verses  depends  on  the  music  to 
which  they  are  almost  inseparably  united  that  it  is 
difficult  to  judge  them  alone.  They  are  not  of  a  high 
order  of  poetry,  in  fact  few  of  them  rise  above  the  level 
of  ballads  and  society  verses,  and  the  attempts  at  epics, 
such  as  Latta  Rookh,  are  among  the  least  to  be 
admired ;  but  they  hit  the  mark  at  which  they  were 
aimed,  and  there  are  few,  if  any,  modern  poets  who  can 
claim  a  larger  number  of  lines  which  have  become 
proverbial.  Sweetness,  like  that  of  the  region  which  he 
made  so  especially  his  own,  was  what  he  sought,  and  it 
cannot  be  said  that  he  did  not  attain  it,  though  often 
by  the  sacrifice  of  strength,  or  of  any  higher  object  than 
that  of  giving  pleasure. 

In  1811  Moore  married  "a  penniless  and  beautiful 
girl  of  sixteen,"  Miss  Elizabeth  Dyke.  Of  this 
improvident  match  Dr.  Garnet,  Mr.  Gwynn,  and  indeed 
all  Moore's  biographers,  say  that  it  brought  him  the 
utmost  connubial  happiness,  and  that  to  the  day  of  his 
death  the  spoilt  pet  of  society  loved  his  Bessie  with  an 
unswerving  affection,  sacrificing  everything  ambition  or 
vanity  may  have  offered  him,  and  living  the  most 
domestic  of  lives  in  his  little  cottage  at  Sloperton,  in 
Wiltshire.  What  this  meant  in  days  before  railways 
we  can  have  little  idea.  Even  the  neighbourhood  of 
the  Lansdowne  family  at  Bowood,  which  gave  him 


338  POETS'  COUNTRY 

frequent  glimpses  of  the  great  world  in  which  he  had 
been  so  admired,  cannot  have  made  up  for  his  periods  of 
seclusion.  But  he  was  constantly  busy.  His  sons,  who 
were  not  worthy  of  their  father,  provided  him  with 
cause  of  anxiety  and  monetary  loss.  "  High-minded 
and  independent  to  an  unusual  degree,"  debt  meant 
unceasing  hard  work.  The  two  boys  were  the  last 
survivors  of  the  family,  but  both  died  young.  Grief  at 
their  loss  and  disappointment  weighed  heavily  on 
Moore's  formerly  buoyant  spirits.  His  last  few  years 
were  but  too  tranquil,  and  he  gradually  sank  into 
lethargy,  only  rousing  himself  once  or  twice  to  receive 
his  lifelong  friend,  Lord  John  Russell.  He  died  in 
1852,  and  was  buried  in  the  churchyard  of  Bromham, 
where  a  costly  stained-glass  window  was  erected  by  his 
numerous  admirers.  Lord  John,  though  just  then 
weighed  down  by  cares  of  state,  undertook  to  edit  his 
life  and  letters,  and  secured  a  provision  for  the  widow. 
She  survived  him  till  1865,  and  lies  beside  him. 

Here  sleeps  the  bard  who  knew  so  well 
All  the  sweet  windings  of  Apollo's  shell ; 
Whether  its  music  rolled  like  torrents  near, 
Or  died  like  distant  streamlets  on  the  ear. 
Sleep,  sleep,  mute  bard ;  alike  unheeded  now 
The  storm  and  zephyr  sweep  thy  lifeless  brow ; — 
That  storm  whose  rush  is  like  thy  martial  lay ; 
That  breeze  which,  like  thy  love-song,  dies  away. 


BURNS 

ONLY  a  small  number  of  Burns's  poems  were  inspired 
by  the  flying  visit  he  paid  to  Edinburgh,  the  Borders, 
and  the  Highlands.  Nearly  all  his  poetry  was  com- 
posed in  the  two  regions  of  Scotland  in  which  he  formed 
more  or  less  permanent  homes  at  successive  periods  ol 
his  life,  namely,  the  country  round  Ayr  and  Mauchline 
and  the  valley  of  the  Nith  from  the  farm  of  Ellisland 
to  Dumfries.  It  is  in  those  two  regions  that  we  must 
look  for  the  scenery  and  other  external  influences  that 
affected  his  character,  and  for  the  originals  of  the 
descriptions  of  Nature  that  supply  the  background  of 
his  poetry. 

So  far  as  his  character  was  moulded  by  the  influence 
of  external  Nature  on  his  mind,  we  shall  find  the 
explanation  of  it  in  Ayrshire  rather  than  in  Nithsdale. 
It  is  in  childhood  and  youth  that  we  are  most  power- 
fully impressed  by  the  natural  scenery  that  reveals  itself 
to  our  eyes.  When  Burns  went  to  Nithsdale  in  1791 
he  was  thirty-two  years  old,  and  his  character  was 
definitely  formed,  so  that  it  was  no  longer  susceptible 

339 


340  POETS'  COUNTRY 

to  much  alteration  from  change  of  environment.  He 
learnt  almost  all  that  Nature  had  to  teach  him  in 
Ayrshire,  especially  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Alloway 
Kirk,  where  he  spent  the  first  seven  years  of  his  life 
in  the  cottage  built  by  his  father,  and  at  Mount 
Oliphant,  two  or  three  miles  distant,  where  he  lived 
on  his  father's  farm  from  his  seventh  to  his  eighteenth 
year. 

The  scenery  on  the  way  from  Ayr  to  Alloway  and 
Mount  Oliphant  is  not  in  any  way  remarkable.  It  has 
the  ordinary  characteristics  of  the  landscapes  of  Lowland 
Scotland,  including  a  beautiful  river  with  green  banks 
overshadowed  by  the  foliage  of  many  trees.  The  river 
that  flows  past  Alloway  is  the  Doon,  glorified  in  one  of 
the  sweetest  of  the  poet's  love-songs.  As  he  roamed 
in  the  impressionable  age  of  boyhood  by  its  banks,  he 
conceived  the  passionate  love  of  rivers  which  is  such  a 
marked  characteristic  of  his  poetry.  The  future  poet, 
however,  could  only  devote  a  very  limited  portion  of 
his  time  to  rambling  by  the  banks  of  the  Doon,  and 
feasting  his  soul  on  the  beauty  that  is  never  absent  from 
streams  of  running  water  in  the  country.  The  winters  in 
Ayrshire  are  long  and  bleak  as  compared  with  English 
winters,  and,  after  the  family  had  removed  to  Mount 
Oliphant,  Robert  Burns  and  his  brother  Gilbert,  boys 
as  they  were,  had  to  do  the  work  of  farm -labourers, 
enduring  what  the  poet  afterwards  described  as  "the 
cheerless  gloom  of  a  hermit  with  the  unceasing  moil  of 
a  galley-slave."  The  life  of  the  Scottish  peasantry  at 


ELLISLAND 

Ellisland  Farmhouse  near  Dumfries  is  situated  on  the 
banks  of  the  Nith.  From  its  garden  a  secluded  path 
descends  by  the  river,  a  favourite  walk  of  Burns.  A  more 
reposeful  spot  could  not  be  selected,  and  the  ripple  of  the 
water  and  rustle  of  the  leaves  add  to  its  quiet  charm. 
It  was  here  that  he  composed  the  lines  : — 

Thou  ling'ring  star,  with  less'ning  ray, 
That  lov'st  to  greet  the  early  morn, 

Again  thou  usher'st  in  the  day 
My  Mary  from  my  soul  was  torn. 


BURNS  341 

this  time  was  indeed  for  the  most  part  a  long,  continual 
struggle  with  the  earth,  and  their  toil  was  relieved  by 
few  intervals  of  relaxation.  Outdoor  sports  had  not 
much  attraction  for  men  exhausted  by  the  hard  labour 
by  which  they  earned  their  bare  subsistence.  Burns 
and  his  brother,  being  studiously  inclined,  devoted  their 
evenings  in  winter  to  reading  by  the  light  of  the 
guttering  candle-dip,  but  most  of  their  neighbours  had 
less  refined  tastes,  and  found  recreation  in  drinking  ale 
and  whisky,  as  Burns  himself  too  soon  learned  to  do. 
In  spring  and  summer  the  one  great  enthralling  amuse- 
ment that  varied  the  monotony  of  existence  consisted 
in  love-making.  In  the  long  summer  evenings  lads  and 
lasses  would,  after  their  day's  work,  meet  by  the  banks 
of  the  Doon  and  the  Ayr,  where,  with  their  souls 
awakened  by  passion,  they  saw  earth,  water,  sky,  and 
every  common  sight  "apparelled  in  celestial  light,  the 
glory  and  the  freshness  of  a  dream." 

Speaking  generally,  we  may  say  that  the  long  cold 
winter  of  Scotland,  together  with  the  absence  of  amuse- 
ments and  the  rigidly  solemn  observance  of  the  day  of 
rest,  would  naturally  tend  to  produce  melancholy, 
especially  in  the  case  of  a  man  like  Burns,  naturally 
disposed  to  hypochondria  and  feeling  within  him  the 
consciousness  of  great  powers  for  the  development  of 
which  his  lowly  birth  could  not  afford  due  scope.  At 
any  rate,  there  is  sufficient  evidence  both  in  his  poems 
and  in  his  letters  to  show  that  Burns  from  his  earliest 
youth  was  subject  to  terrible  fits  of  depression,  during 


342  POETS'  COUNTRY 

which  the  burden  of  life  was  almost  intolerable.  With 
reference  to  his  Prayer  under  the  Pressure  of  Violent 
Anguish,  one  of  his  earliest  poems,  he  says  that  it  was 
written  at  a  time  when  his  spirit  was  broken  by  repeated 
losses  and  disasters.  "My  body,"  he  adds,  "was 
attacked  by  that  dreadful  distemper,  a  hypochondria, 
the  recollection  of  which  makes  me  yet  shudder."  In 
a  letter  written  in  the  end  of  1787,  he  complains  that 
the  weakness  of  his  nerves  has  so  debilitated  his 
mind  that  he  dare  neither  review  his  past  nor  look 
forward  into  futurity.  "  I  am  quite  transported,"  he 
goes  on,  "at  the  thought  that  ere  long,  perhaps  very 
soon,  I  shall  bid  an  eternal  adieu  to  all  the  pains  and 
uneasiness  and  disquietudes  of  this  weary  life ;  for  I 
assure  you  I  am  heartily  tired  of  it ;  and  if  I  do  not  very 
much  deceive  myself,  I  could  contentedly  and  gladly 
resign  it."  In  this  state  of  mind  the  poet  was  disposed 
to  take  the  view  of  human  life  expressed  in  Man  was 
made  to  Mourn.  His  deeply  sympathetic  nature  also 
moved  him  to  sorrow  over  the  sufferings  of  the  animal 
world.  His  mind  was  saddened  by  the  consciousness 
that  man's  dominion  has  broken  the  social  union  that 
ought  to  exist  between  the  higher  and  lower  grades  of 
animal  life.  It  distressed  him  to  think  of  the  mouse's 
cosy  home  broken  up  by  the  ploughshare,  of  the  ourie 
cattle  and  silly  sheep  exposed  to  the  blasts  of  the  bitter- 
biting  north  wind,  and  the  miserable  plight  in  winter 
of  the  singing-birds  that  had  not  fled  to  a  sunnier 
clime : — 


BURNS  343 

Ilk  happing  bird,  wee,  helpless  thing, 
That,  in  the  merry  months  o'  spring, 
Delighted  me  to  hear  thee  sing, 

What  comes  o'  thee  ? 
Where  wilt  thou  cow'r  thy  cluttering  wing, 

An'  close  thy  e'e  ? 

On  the  other  hand,  the  principle  of  compensation, 
by  which  those  who  are  liable  to  be  plunged  in  the 
deepest  abyss  of  melancholy  are  often  exalted  by  exuber- 
ance of  joy,  is  exemplified  in  Burns.  Many  of  his  poems 
express  such  gladness  and  uproarious  merriment  as  are 
beyond  the  reach  of  ordinary  mortals.  When  the  dark 
fit  was  not  on  him,  he  derived  continual  pleasure  from 

Nature's  charms,  the  hills  and  woods, 
The  sweeping  vales,  the  foaming  floods. 

At  even,  when  the  dewy  fields  were  green  and  all 
Nature  listened  to  the  song  of  the  mavis,  his  "heart 
rejoic'd  in  Nature's  joy."  In  a  letter  to  Mrs.  Dunlop 
he  expresses  the  effect  produced  on  him  by  external 
nature,  and  gives  her  an  interesting  list  of  the  flowers 
he  loved  best.  "I  have,"  he  writes,  "some  favourite 
flowers  in  spring,  among  which  are  the  mountain  daisy, 
the  harebell,  the  foxglove,  the  wild  brier -rose,  the 
budding  birk,  and  the  hoary  hawthorn,  that  I  view  and 
hang  over  with  particular  delight.  I  never  hear  the 
loud  solitary  whistle  of  the  curlew  in  a  summer  noon, 
or  the  wild  mixing  cadence  of  a  troop  of  grey  plover 
in  an  autumnal  morning,  without  feeling  an  elevation 
of  soul  like  the  enthusiasm  of  Devotion  or  Poetry." 


344  POETS'  COUNTRY 

His  soul  was  also  keenly  alive  to  the  sweet  fragrance  of 
trees  and  flowers.  The  "  sweet-scented  birk  "  and  the 
"  milk-white  thorn  that  scents  the  evening  gale  "  seem 
to  have  been  the  trees  that  he  loved  most.  More 
than  one  passage  in  his  poems  celebrates  the  perfume 
of  the  bean,  as  for  instance  in  the  Ekgy  on  Captain 
Henderson : 

At  dawn,  when  ev'ry  grassy  blade 
Droops  with  a  diamond  at  its  head, 
At  ev'n,  when  beans  their  fragrance  shed 
I'  th'  rustling  gale. 

The  way  in  which  dew  brings  out  the  fragrance  of 
flowers  finds  beautiful  expression  in  the  line  that  tells 
us  how  "  the  wa'flower  scents  the  dewy  air." 

Of  all  objects  of  Nature,  it  is  clear  from  his  letters 
and  his  poems  that  brooks  and  rivers  gave  most  delight 
and  solace  to  his  soul.  No  one,  he  thought,  could  be 
a  poet 

Till  by  himself  he  learned  to  wander 
Adown  some  trottin'  burn's  meander, 
And  no  think  lang. 

Nor  is  this  to  be  wondered  at  by  any  one  who  has  seen 
the  beautiful  glens  through  which  the  streams  of  his 
native  country  flow.  Such  a  typical  English  river  as 
the  "smug  and  silver  Trent,"  the  Avon  or  the  Ouse, 
has  a  quiet  beauty  of  its  own  as  it  runs  in  its  channel 
fair  and  evenly  through  deep-meadowed  valleys  with  its 
course  marked  by  the  pollards  on  its  banks.  But  it  is 
usually  sluggish,  and  its  muddy  bed  is  often  choked 
with  weeds.  Far  different  are  the  streams  of  Scotland, 


BURNS  345 

whose  waters,  stained  to  the  rich  brown  of  a  dark  cairn- 
gorm by  the  peat  mosses  near  their  source,  ripple  over 
their  pebbly  channels,  dash,  white  with  foam,  over  high 
waterfalls,  or  cut  their  way  through  deep  gorges  of 
sandstone  or  granite.  The  fascinating  variety  of  a 
Scotch  burn  is  described,  as  far  as  words  can  describe 
it,  in  a  stanza  of  the  poem  on  Hallowe'en  : — 

Whiles  ower  a  linn  the  burnie  plays, 

As  thro'  the  glen  it  wimpl't ; 
Whiles  round  a  rocky  scaur  it  strays, 

Whiles  in  a  wiel  it  dimpl't ; 
Whiles  glitter'd  to  the  nightly  rays, 

Wi'  bickerin',  dancing  dazzle ; 
Whiles  cookit  underneath  the  braes, 

Below  the  spreading  hazel, 

Unseen  that  night. 

Dearest  of  all  rivers  to  the  poet  were  the  Doon  and 
the  Ayr.  The  Doon  was  dear  to  him  as  the  haunt  of 
his  boyhood,  from  which  he  derived  his  first  poetic 
inspiration : 

Bonnie  Doon,  where  early  roaming, 
First  I  weaved  the  rustic  song. 

The  Ayr  is  for  ever  sacred  to  the  memory  of  Highland 
Mary,  who  on  its  banks  plighted  her  troth  to  Burns 
and  bade  him  what  proved  to  be  her  last  farewell,  for 
she  died  shortly  afterwards  of  a  malignant  fever  at 
Greenock.  The  details  of  the  parting  scene  are  given 
in  Cromek's  Reliques  of  Burns,  where  we  read  that 
"  the  lovers  stood  on  each  side  of  a  small  purling  brook  ; 
they  laved  their  hands  in  its  limpid  stream,  and,  holding 


346  POETS'  COUNTRY 

a  Bible  between  them,  pronounced  their  vows  to  be 
faithful  to  each  other."  This  account  is  confirmed 
by  the  Bible  given  by  Burns  to  Highland  Mary,  which 
is  now  to  be  seen  in  the  monument  at  Alloway.  There 
are  two  places  that  compete  for  the  honour  of  being 
the  scene  of  this  famous  parting.  The  first  is  the 
junction  of  the  Fail  and  the  Ayr  at  Failford ;  but  the 
Fail,  where  it  flows  into  the  Ayr,  is  too  broad  a  stream 
for  lovers  to  clasp  hands  over.  All  the  necessary  con- 
ditions seem  to  be  better  satisfied  higher  up  the  Ayr, 
where  it  is  joined  by  Mauchline  Burn.  Here  in  a 
sequestered,  thickly -wooded  valley  flows  a  purling 
stream,  across  the  running  water  of  which  the  parting 
lovers  could  easily  have  joined  hands.  That  this  little 
stream  was  a  favourite  resort  is  further  shown  by  the 
fact  that  on  its  banks  is  a  rock  with  initials  and  dates 
engraved  upon  it  going  back  to  the  beginning  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  We  may,  therefore,  reasonably 
suppose  that  the  lovers  all  through  their  day  of  parting 
love  wandered  about  Ayr's  "pebbled  shore  o'erhung 
with  wild  woods,  thickening  green,"  and  when  the 
"  glowing  west "  proclaimed  the  coming  of  evening,  they 
ascended  the  burn  to  the  place  where  they  could  take 
their  last  farewell  with  the  ceremonies  prescribed  by 
local  custom.  No  doubt  the  poor  Highland  girl  knew 
the  excessive  susceptibility  of  her  lover's  heart,  and 
hoped  by  solemn  oaths  to  keep  it  hers  for  ever. 

In  the  two  poems  relating  to  the  parting  with  his 
Highland  Mary,  Burns  describes  the  Ayr  flowing  gently 


THE   RIVER  BOON 

Bonnie  Doon  by  Doonside  Mill  might  well  inspire  the 
lines — 

Ye  banks  and  'braes  o'  bonnie  Doon, 
How  can  ye  bloom  sae  fresh  and  fair, 

while  the  running  stream  and  the  arch  of  Tarn  o'  Shanter's 
Brig  in  the  distance  recall — 

Now,  do  thy  speedy  utmost,  Meg, 
And  win  the  keystane  o'  the  brig ; 
There  at  them  thou  thy  tail  may  toss, 
A  running  stream  they  darena'  cross. 


BUKNS  347 

under  the  green  birks  and  hawthorns.  Elsewhere  he 
gives  a  fine  picture  of  the  different  aspect  of  the  same 
river  dashing  with  indignation  against  the  bridges  that 
span  it : — 

When  heavy,  dark,  continued,  a'-day  rains 
Wi'  deepening  deluges  o'erflow  the  plains ; 
When  from  the  hills  where  springs  the  brawling  Coil, 
Or  stately  Lugar's  mossy  fountains  boil, 
Or  where  the  Greenock  winds  his  moorland  course, 
Or  haunted  Garpal  draws  his  feeble  source, 
Arous'd  by  blust'ring  winds  and  spotted  thowes, 
In  mony  a  torrent  down  his  snaw-broo  rowes ; 
While  crashing  ice,  borne  on  the  roaring  spate, 
Sweeps  dams,  an'  mills,  an'  brigs,  a'  to  the  gate ; 
And  from  Glenbuck,  down  to  the  Ratton-key, 
Auld  Ayr  is  just  one  lengthen'd  tumbling  sea — 
Then  down  ye'll  hurl  (deil  nor  ye  never  rise  !), 
And  dash  the  gumlie  jaups  up  to  the  pouring  skies. 

There  are  few  grander  sights  in  Nature  than  a  river 
in  Scotland  in  full  flood,  and  it  is  much  to  say  that  the 
genius  of  Burns  does  not  fail  to  do  justice  to  the  sub- 
limity of  the  spectacle. 

In  his  treatment  of  winter  also,  Burns  shows  that, 
like  Byron,  he  delighted  in  the  sterner  and  sublimer 
aspects  of  Nature.  "There  is  scarcely  any  earthly 
object,"  we  read  in  his  commonplace  book,  "  gives  me 
more — I  don't  know  if  I  should  call  it  pleasure,  but 
something  which  exalts  me,  something  which  enraptures 
me — than  to  walk  in  the  sheltered  side  of  a  wood  or 
high  plantation,  in  a  cloudy  winter  day,  and  hear  a 
stormy  wind  howling  among  the  trees  and  raving  o'er 


348  POETS'  COUNTRY 

the  plain."  The  same  recognition  of  the  beauty  of 
winter  is  expressed  in  verse,  in  his  Epistle  to  William 
Simpson : — 

Ev'n  winter  bleak  has  charms  to  me, 
When  winds  rave  thro'  the  naked  tree ; 
Or  frosts  on  hills  of  Ochiltree 

Are  hoary-grey ; 
Or  blinding  drifts  wild-furious  flee, 

Dark'ning  the  day. 

Some  of  the  finest  passages  in  his  works  are  descriptive 
of  winter,  especially  the  stanzas  on  a  Winter  Night, 
beginning : — 

When  biting  Boreas,  fell  and  dour, 
Sharp  shivers  through  the  leafless  bow'r ; 
When  Phoabus  gies  a  short-lived  glow'r 

Far  south  the  lift, 
Dim-dark'ning  thro'  the  flaky  show'r 

Or  whirling  drift : 

Ae  night  the  storm  the  steeples  rock'd, 
Poor  labour  sweet  in  sleep  was  lock'd, 
While  burns,  wi'  snawy  wreaths  up-chok'd, 

Wild-eddying  swirl ; 
Or,  thro'  the  mining  outlet  bock'd, 

Down  headlong  hurl. 

In  1788  Burns  left  Ayrshire  and  settled  in  Dumfries- 
shire, but  he  never  loved  the  banks  of  the  Nith  as  he 
had  loved  the  Ayr  and  the  Doon.  He  was  thinking  of 
the  land  as  well  as  of  the  wife  he  left  behind  him,  when 
he  sang : 

O'  a'  the  airts  the  wind  can  blaw, 
I  dearly  like  the  west. 

In    other   verses    written    about   the    same    time    he 


BURNS  349 

attributed  a  similar  westward  yearning  to  his  favourite 
mare,  Jenny  Geddes,  whom  he  had  brought  with  him 
from  Ayrshire : — 

Dowie  she  saunters  down  Nithside, 
And  aye  a  westlin'  leuk  she  throws, 
While  tears  hap  o'er  her  auld  brown  nose. 

He  indeed  appreciated  the  beauty  of  his  new  sur- 
roundings ;  above  all  he  viewed  with  admiration  the 
noble  river  which  flowed  past  Ellisland  to  his  last  home 
in  Dumfries,  the  Queen  of  the  South.  "The  banks  of 
the  Nith,"  he  acknowledges,  "  are  as  sweet  poetic  ground 
as  any  I  ever  saw."  He  was  often  seen  walking  along 
the  river  opposite  Lincluden  Abbey.  It  was  there  he 
saw  a  ghostly  minstrel,  when 

The  winds  were  laid,  the  air  was  still, 
The  stars  they  shot  along  the  sky ; 

The  tod  was  howling  on  the  hill, 

And  the  distant-echoing  glens  reply. 

The  burn  adown  its  hazelly  path 

Was  rushing  by  the  ruined  wa', 
Hasting  to  join  the  sweeping  Nith, 

Whose  roarings  seem'd  to  rise  and  fa'. 

The  cauld  blae  North  was  streaming  forth 

Her  lights  wi'  hissing,  eerie  din, 
Athort  the  lift  they  start  and  shift, 

Like  Fortune's  favours,  tint  as  win. 

But  with  the  exception  of  this  fine  commencement  to 
a  poem  with  a  somewhat  lame  and  impotent  conclusion, 
he  does  not  do  justice  to  the  broad  river  "worthy  of 
heroic  song"  that  flowed  past  the  home  of  his  later 


350  POETS'  COUNTRY 

years.  He  leaves  unsung  the  great  castle  of  Caerlave- 
rock  and  Sweetheart  Abbey  with  its  touching  story  of 
wifely  devotion.  The  most  famous  poems  that  he  com- 
posed in  Dumfriesshire  have  their  scenes  laid  far  away  in 
the  land  of  Kyle.  It  was  in  the  farmyard  of  Ellisland 
that  he  consecrated  a  night  of  memories  and  sighs  to  his 
parting  from  Highland  Mary  by  the  banks  of  the  Ayr, 
lying  sheltered  by  a  cornstack  from  the  cold  wind, 
until  the  lessening  ray  of  the  morning  star  greeted  the 
dawn.  Two  other  beautiful  love-songs  composed  in 
Nithsdale,  Flow  gently,  sweet  A/ton,  and  Ye  Banks  and 
Braes  o  Bonnie  Doon,  prove  that  the  poet  in  imagina- 
tion was  still  haunting  the  rivers  of  Ayrshire.  How 
clear  was  the  memory  of  the  scenes  of  his  boyhood  is 
shown  in  the  vivid  realism  of  the  description  of  Tarn 
o'  Shanter's  ride  with  its  minute  local  allusions.  This 
masterpiece,  composed  at  Ellisland  in  the  end  of  1790, 
also  reveals  the  deep  impression  produced  many  years 
before  in  his  childish  mind  by  the  stories  of  an  old 
woman  called  Betty  Davidson,  who  had,  he  says,  "  the 
largest  collection  in  the  country  of  tales  and  songs 
concerning  devils,  ghosts,  fairies,  brownies,  witches, 
warlocks,  spunkies,  kelpies,  elf -candles,  dead -lights, 
wraiths,  apparitions,  cantraips,  enchanted  towers, 
giants,  dragons,  and  other  trumpery.  This  cultivated 
the  latent  seeds  of  poetry."  No  doubt  Burns  was 
indebted  to  her  for  the  rich  vein  of  superstition  that 
colours  some  of  his  most  famous  poems.  But  for 
Betty  Davidson,  there  would  have  been  no  Tarn  o' 


BURNS  351 

Shanter,  and  he  would  have  been  less  able  to  portray 
to  the  life  Auld  Nickie  Ben  and  the  observance  of 
Hallowe'en. 

Burns's  appreciation  of  the  beauty  of  external  nature 
was  subject  to  other  than  geographical  limitations.  It 
is  evident  that  he  found  little  to  admire  in  the  sea,  the 
mountain,  and  the  moorland.  The  beautiful  district  of 
Galloway  uplands  on  the  borders  of  Ayrshire,  with  its 
rich  colours  of  purple  and  green,  sometimes  bright  in 
the  sunlight  and  sometimes  softened  under  the  glamour 
of  cloud  and  mist,  he  describes  as  a  "track  of 
melancholy,  joyless  muirs."  He  never  appears  to  have 
climbed  Cairnsmuir  or  the  Merrick  and  looked  down 
on  the  sublime  view  of  lake,  mountain,  and  sea  com- 
manded from  their  summits.  He  can  dramatically 
put  into  the  mouth  of  a  Highland  girl  a  regretful 
farewell  to  the  "mountains  high-cover'd  with  snow," 
but  he  himself  looked  upon  the  world  with  the  eyes 
of  a  tiller  of  the  soil,  and,  as  such,  had  a  natural 
preference  for  fertile  plains  and  rivers,  which  were 
convenient  not  only  for  romantic  lovers  but  also  for 
practical  farmers.  Tradition  had  many  tales  to  tell 
of  the  ravages  of  Highland  caterans,  and  the  mountains 
were,  even  in  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  looked 
upon  with  hereditary  antipathy  by  the  peasants  of  the 
Lowlands  as  the  home  of  "  hunger'd  Highland  boors " 
naturally  inclined  to  plunder  and  murder.  Burns's 
insensibility  to  the  beauty  of  the  sea  is  still  more 
remarkable.  At  his  birthplace  he  was  within  easy 


352  POETS'  COUNTRY 

reach  of  the  shore  ;  and  later,  at  Mount  Oliphant,  Loch- 
lea,  and  Mossgiel,  he  could  not  lift  his  eyes  westward 
on  a  clear  day  without  seeing  a  splendid  prospect  of 
the  entrance  to  the  Firth  of  Clyde  with  the  romantic 
peaks  of  Arran  in  the  background.  But  of  all  this  we 
find  nothing  in  his  poetry.  Perhaps  the  only  passage 
indicating  that  he  ever  looked  on  the  ocean  with  plea- 
sure is  in  the  Vision*  where  Coila  says  to  him : 

I  saw  thee  seek  the  sounding  shore, 
Delighted  with  the  dashing  roar. 

The  poet  generally  is  more  inclined  to  regard  the  waves 
of  the  sea  with  abhorrence  as  conspiring  with  mountain 
and  moorland  to  separate  hearts  which  are,  or  ought 
to  be,  true  to  each  other, 

Tho'  mountains  rise  and  deserts  howl, 
And  oceans  roar  between. 

It  has  been  asserted  that  Burns  had  little  of  that 
sympathy  with  the  traditional  and  historical  which 
invests  Scott's  descriptions  of  mountain  and  valley  with 
the  romance  of  the  past.  It  would  be  more  true  to 
say  that  lack  of  accurate  historical  knowledge  pre- 
vented Burns  from  representing  the  past  in  his  imagina- 
tion as  vividly  and  completely  as  his  great  successor 
does.  Therefore  his  historical  reminiscences  are  almost 
entirely  confined  to  the  best  known  characters  of 
Scottish  history,  namely,  Bruce,  Wallace,  Queen  Mary, 
and  the  Young  Chevalier.  Even  in  the  case  of  the 
Battle  of  Bannockburn  he  evidently  makes  the  strange 


THE   RIVER  AYR  AT  FAILFORD 

The  Ayr  at  Failford  at  its  junction  with  the  Fail  is 
popularly  supposed  to  have  been  the  last  parting-place  of 
Burns  and  Highland  Mary  : — 

Ayr,  gurgling,  kiss'd  his  pebbled  shore, 
O'erhung  with  wild  woods,  thick 'ning  green  ; 

The  fragrant  birch,  and  hawthorn  hoar, 
Twin'd  am'rous  round  the  raptur'd  scene. 

Seeing  all  these  features  there,  I  painted  them  faithfully, 
believing  they  are  still  as  Burns  saw  them.  p  g  ^y. 


BURNS  353 

mistake  of  supposing  that  the  defeated  English  king 
was  Edward  I.,  for  otherwise  he  would  hardly  have 
given  him  in  his  verse  the  not  very  appropriate  epithet 
of  "proud,"  and  would  certainly  not  have  called  him,  as 
he  does  in  a  letter,  a  "  cruel  but  able  usurper."  Never- 
theless, as  far  as  his  knowledge  allowed  him,  Burns  took 
the  keenest  interest  and  pride  in  the  "  ancient  glory  "  of 
his  native  land.  "  Scottish  scenes,"  he  wrote  to  Mrs. 
Dunlop,  "and  Scottish  story  are  the  themes  I  could 
wish  to  sing."  He  longed  to  be  able  "  to  make  leisurely 
pilgrimages  through  Caledonia  ;  to  sit  on  the  fields 
of  her  battles  ;  to  wander  on  the  romantic  banks  of  her 
rivers  ;  and  to  muse  by  the  stately  towers  or  venerable 
ruins,  once  the  honored  abodes  of  her  heroes."  In  his 
boyhood  he  pored  over  the  story  of  Wallace.  One  fine 
summer  day,  after  reading  of  the  hero's  retreat  to 
Leglen  wood,  he  walked  there  "  with  as  much  enthusiasm 
as  ever  pilgrim  did  to  Loretto,"  and  explored  every 
den  and  dell,  while  his  heart  "  glowed  with  a  wish  to 
be  able  to  make  a  song  on  him  in  some  measure  equal 
to  his  merit."  This  aspiration  he  cherished  to  the  end 
of  his  life,  but  never  realised.  Later  in  life,  while  riding 
across  a  Galloway  moor  between  Castle  Douglas  and 
Gatehouse  in  a  violent  storm,  the  tune  that,  according 
to  tradition,  inspired  the  martial  ardour  of  the  Scots 
at  Bannockburn  rang  through  his  brain.  The  tumult 
of  the  tempest  passing  through  the  alembic  of  the 
poet's  mind,  blended  with  the  old  battle  strain,  was 
transformed  into  heroic  harmony,  and  the  result  was 

2A 


354  POETS'  COUNTRY 

the  grand  war  lyric  that  thrills  the  heart  of  Greater 
Scotland  in  every  quarter  of  the  world.  In  two  of 
Burns's  dramatic  lyrics  the  return  of  spring  is  pathetically 
described  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  exiled  Prince 
Charlie  and  the  imprisoned  Queen  of  Scots.  But  the 
sentimental  Jacobitism  which  inspired  these  songs 
prevented  Burns  from  casting  a  religious  halo  round 
the  moorlands  stained  with  the  blood  of  those  who 
"  rolled  the  psalm  to  wintry  skies."  Indeed,  he  glorifies 
with  the  name  of  martyr,  not  the  Covenanters  who  were 
shot  for  worshipping  on  mountain  and  clough,  but  the 
instrument  of  the  Government  that  oppressed  them, 

Great  Dundee,  who  smiling  victory  led, 
And  fell  a  martyr  in  her  arms. 

Burns,  in  spite  of  his  moral  failings,  was  full  of  deep 
religious  feeling,  but  he  was  too  broad-minded  to  feel 
much  sympathy  for  any  form  of  sectarian  bigotry,  how- 
ever much  it  might  be  glorified  by  courage  and  devotion. 
Therefore  he  found  the  sanctity  of  religion  brooding 
over  the  ruins  of  Lincluden  Abbey  rather  than  where 
the  whaups  cry  above  the  tombs  of  the  Covenanters, 
who  had  suffered  martyrdom  on  the  moorland  moss 
at  the  hands  of  Claverhouse  and  Grierson  of  Lag. 

One  sentiment  that  pervades  Burns's  view  of  Nature 
is  that  which  is  called  by  Ruskin  the  pathetic  fallacy. 
He  continually  looks  to  the  external  world  for  sympathy 
with  human  joy  and  sorrow,  and,  when  he  fails  to  find  such 
sympathy,  reproaches  Nature  for  her  callous  insensibility. 


BURNS  355 

Thus  in  his  Elegy  on  Captain  Matthew  Henderson  he 
calls  upon  universal  Nature  to  lament  over  the  death  of 
his  friend.  Milton  contents  himself  with  inviting  all 
the  flowers  that  sad  embroidery  wear  to  mourn  for 
Lycidas.  Burns  appeals  not  only  to  his  favourite 
flowers,  but  also  to  the  groves,  the  burns,  beasts  and 
birds,  rivers,  forest,  hills,  plains,  sun,  moon,  stars,  and 
the  four  seasons  to  join  in  his  mourning,  and  many  of 
the  stanzas  contain  exquisite  miniatures  of  the  various 
objects  enumerated.  During  the  golden  hours  of  the 
day  spent  with  Highland  Mary  on  the  banks  of  the 
Ayr,  Nature,  animate  and  inanimate,  was  infected  with 
the  spirit  of  love,  so  that 

Ayr,  gurgling,  kiss'd  his  pebbled  shore, 

O'erhung  with  wild  woods,  thick'ning  green ; 

The  fragrant  birch,  and  hawthorn  hoar, 
Twin'd  am'rous  round  the  raptur'd  scene  ; 

The  flow'rs  sprang  wanton  to  be  prest, 
The  birds  sang  love  on  every  spray. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  love-lorn  lady  on  the  Banks 
and  Braes  of  Bonnie  Doon  is  tortured  by  the  joyous 
songs  of  the  birds.  The  same  painful  contrast  is  ex- 
pressed in  Strathallaris  Lament  and  in  another  song 
which  ends  with  an  appeal  to  Winter  to  come  and  put 
an  end  to  the  jarring  discord  between  the  joy  of  Nature 
and  the  sadness  of  a  human  heart : — 

Come,  Winter,  with  thine  angry  howl, 

And  raging  bend  the  naked  tree  ; 
Thy  gloom  will  soothe  my  cheerless  soul, 

When  Nature  all  is  sad  like  me ! 

2A2 


356  POETS'  COUNTRY 

In  like  manner  in  his  dirge  on  Winter  the  poet,  writ- 
ing in  his  own  person,  exclaims  : — 

The  tempest's  howl,  it  soothes  my  soul, 

My  griefs  it  seems  to  join ; 
The  leafless  trees  my  fancy  please, 

Their  fate  resembles  mine ! 

And  in  the  lines  on  the  death  of  Robert  Dun  das,  the 
dark  waste  hills,  the  brown  unsightly  plains,  are  con- 
genial scenes  that  soothe  his  mournful  state  of  mind. 
In  Man  was  made  to  Mourn  an  appropriate  back- 
ground for  the  melancholy  reflections  is  provided  by  the 
bare  fields  and  forests  through  which  sweeps  the  surly 
blast  of  chill  November.  In  the  Jolly  Beggars,  on  the 
contrary,  the  frost,  hail,  and  cold  north  wind  intensify  by 
contrast  the  reckless  merriment  of  the  randie,  gangrel 
bodies  assembled  in  Poosie-Nansie's  inn.  So  also  the 
shepherd  who  has  spent  the  wet,  wintry  day 

Behind  yon  hills  where  Stinchar  flows 
'Mang  moors  and  mosses  many,  O, 

looks  forward  with  keener  zest  to  his  evening  visit  to 
his  Nannie.  The  angry  sough  of  the  chill,  wild  wintry 
wind  enhances  the  pleasure  that  the  cottar,  returning 
on  Saturday  night,  takes  in  his  "  wee  bit  ingle,  blinkin' 
bonnilie." 

In  forming  an  estimate  of  Burns's  treatment  of 
natural  scenery  we  must  always  remember  that  he  is 
not  primarily  a  descriptive  poet.  Although  his  soul 
was  deeply  affected  by  the  beauty  of  external  Nature, 


BURNS  357 

he  seldom  or  never  describes  it  for  its  own  sake,  but, 
like  Homer  and  the  Greek  tragedians,  subordinates 
Nature  to  the  fortunes  and  passions  of  men  and  women. 
Therefore  we  do  not  find  in  his  works  the  long, 
elaborate  pictures  of  natural  scenery  by  which  Words- 
worth, Byron,  and  Scott  reveal  their  attitude  towards 
Nature.  To  fully  appreciate  Burns's  wonderful  power 
of  graphic  description  we  have  to  gather  together  the 
many  references  to  external  Nature  scattered  through 
his  songs  and  other  poems.  This  power  is  perhaps 
most  brilliantly  manifested  in  single  lines  and  even 
single  words  that  illuminate  the  background  of  his 
poems  with  the  vividness  and  startling  suddenness  of 
lightning  flashes.  There  is  a  magic  touch  that  defies 
critical  analysis  in  his  word-pictures  of  the  "glen  of 
green  breckan  wi'  the  burn  stealing  through  the  lang 
yellow  broom,"  "that  hour  o'  night's  black  arch  the 
key-stane,"  the  "moors  red-brown  wi'  heather  bells," 
"the  histie  stibble  field,"  "the  winter's  sleety  dribble 
and  cranreuch  cauld,"  the  daisy  "glinting  forth  amid 
the  storm,"  the  "glowrin'  trout,"  the  frost  that  "crept, 
gently  -  crusting,  o'er  the  glittering  stream,"  and 
"yellow  Autumn  wreathed  with  nodding  corn." 
Burns  prided  himself  most  on  his  "manners-painting 
strain."  We  may  say  with  truth,  borrowing  the  strong 
metaphor  of  Bacon,  that  no  lyrics  ever  written  were 
more  thoroughly  drenched  in  the  flesh  and  blood  of 
human  passion  than  those  of  Burns.  Nevertheless  in 
his  poetry  we  find  not  only  the  life  and  character  of  his 


358  POETS'  COUNTRY 

countrymen  and  countrywomen,  but  in  the  background 
a  perfect  picture  of  the  rural  scenery  of  lowland 
Scotland  executed  with  the  loving  fidelity  of  a  native 
of  the  soil.  Above  all  his  other  characteristics  Burns 
was  a  patriotic  Scotsman.  He  loved  his  country  with 
all  his  heart  and  with  all  his  soul  and  with  all  his 
strength.  It  is  this  that  has  made  him  so  dear  to  his 
countrymen  and  a  bond  of  union  to  them  in  every 
quarter  of  the  globe.  Although  Scotsmen  in  pursuit 
of  fame  and  fortune  and  higher  objects  travel  far  from 
the  land  where  their  forefathers  sleep, 

tamen  istuc  mens  animusque 
Fert  et  amat  spatiis  obstantia  rumpere  claustra. 

In  the  poetry  of  Burns  they  find  as  true  and  vivid 
a  picture  of  their  native  land  as  genius  can  produce 
through  the  witchery  of  verse.  Its  magic  charm  upon 
their  minds  is  heightened  by  the  fact  that  most  of  it 
is  written  not,  as  Scott's  masterpieces  of  description  are, 
in  the  "  fine  English "  of  England,  but  in  "  guid  braid 
Scotch,"  that  recalls  to  memory  the  voices  of  their 
mothers,  nurses,  and  school -companions.  Thus  it  is 
that  the  Scottish  exile  on  the  torrid  plains  of  India  or 
the  icy  gold-fields  of  Alaska  cannot  open  his  Burns 
without  being  immediately  transported  in  imagination 
to  the  home  of  his  childhood,  and  to  the  glen  where 
perchance  long  ago  as  a  barefooted  child  he  "paidl'd 
i'  the  burn,  and  pu'd  the  go  wans  fine." 


INDEX 


Abbotsford,  93 

Adieu,  The,  54 

Akenside,  M.,  142,  172 

Alastor,  105,  253 

Aldborough,  239,  242 

Aldworth,  263 

Alfoxden,  33,  72 

Alice  du  Clos,  81 

Allan  Bank,  41 

Amaebcean  Eclogues,  209 

Amwell,  128,  144,  208 

Ancient  Mariner,  75 

Anima  Poetae,  80 

Animated  Nature,  181,  291,  293 

Ankerwyke  Priory,  129,  131 

Antony  and  Cleopatra,  8,  17 

Arcades,  120 

Arden,  forest  of,  8,  9 

Armstrong,  J.,  142,  172 

Art  of  Preserving  Health,  The,  172, 

Ashiestiel,  92 

Audley  Court,  263 

Austin,  Lady,  223 

Autumn,  248 

Avernus,  Lake,  98 

Avon,  river,  8 

Ayr,  river,  345 

Beachy  Head,  128 

Beattie,  J.,  143,  201 

Biographia  Literaria,  75 

"  Boatswain,"  Byron's  dog,  59 

Borderers,  The,  31,  32 

Border  hills,  92 

Borough,  The,  241,  244,  245,  247 

Boswell,  J.,  290,  293 

Bowles,  W.  L.,  145,  211 

Brent,  river,  52 

Brockley  Coomb,  69 

Brook,  The  (Coleridge),  75 

Brook,  The  (Tennyson),  256 

Brougham  Castle,  29 


173 


Browning,  Robert,  51 

Burgage  Manor,  53 

Burns,  R. ,  340 ;  his  love-songs,  350 ; 
external  nature,  351 ;  patriotism,  352- 
358  ;  descriptive  power,  357 

Burns  country,  340 

Byron,  Lord,  46 ;  and  the  Highlands, 
47 ;  first  sight  of  Newstead  Abbey, 
49 ;  at  Dulwich  Academy,  at  Harrow, 
at  Cambridge,  52 ;  Fugitive  Pieces 
and  Poems  on  Various  Occasions,  53 ; 
Hours  of  Idleness,  54 ;  Newstead 
Abbey,  56  ;  last  visit  to,  61 ;  Byron 
and  Wordsworth,  62 ;  and  Nature, 
63  ;  145,  149,  260 

Byron's  Pool,  53 

Campbell,  T.,  178 

Canterbury  Tales,  285,  288 

Cauldshields  Loch,  93 

Chambers,  SirW.,  195 

Chambers,  Sir  W.,  Epistle  to,  196 

Charles,  Prince,  88,  95 

Chase,  The,  153 

Chaucer,  G.,  274;  at  Eltham,  283; 
England  in  his  time,  284  ;  288 

Chichester,  182 

Childe  Harold,  52,  62 

Christabel,  75,  76,  77 

Citizen  of  the  World,  The,  294 

Claremont,  128,  153 

Clifford  Chambers,  13 

Cockermouth  Castle,  26 

Coleridge,  S.  T.,  31,  33,  37 ;  and  The 
Friend,  42  ;  and  the  country,  66 ;  and 
The  Watchman,  70 ;  and  Nature,  69- 
71,  73,  82;  at  Nether  Stowey,  71 ;  in 
Germany,  77  ;  in  the  Lakes,  78  ;  145, 
149 

Collins,  W.,  142,  145,  148,  177,  181 ; 
Gray  on,  185 

Colnbrook,  123 


859 


360 


POETS1  COUNTRY 


Comus,  119,  120 

Conway  Castle,  265 

Cooper,  J.  G.,  142 

Cooper's  Hill,  119,  127,  128;  view  from, 
129 

Cooper's  Hill,  130 ;  its  position  in 
regard  to  Nature,  132  ;  140,  151 

Country  Walk,  The,  167,  169 

Cowley,  A.,  133;  his  sensibility  to 
Nature,  134,  136;  his  Essays,  131. ; 
Pope  on,  137 

Cowper,  W.,  143,  144,  215 

Crabbe,  G.,  145,  146;  his  character- 
istics, 251 

Crookham  or  Crowcombe,  36 

Crowe,  W.,  145,  213 

Cuckoo,  The,  41 

Cyder,  140,  153 

Dawn,  15,  16 

Denham,  Sir  J.,  127 

De  Quincey,  T.,  39 

Derwent,  river,  30 

Descriptive  Poetry  of  the  eighteenth 

century,  140,  145,  147 
Descriptive  Poetry  of  the  nineteenth 

century,  147 
Deserted   Village,  143,  178 ;   Macaulay 

on,  178  ;  293,  296 
Dickens,  C.,  95 
Disraeli,  B.,  303 
Disraeli,  I.,  303 

Distant  Prospect  of  Eton,  142,  185,  188 
Dodsley,  142 
Don  Juan,  56 
"  Dora's  field,"  44 
Dove  Cottage,  38 
Dover  Cliff,  1,  4,  20,  24 
Dryburgh  Abbey,  99 
Dryden,  J.,  133;  his  insensibility  to 

Nature,  138  ;  his  character  as  a  poet, 

139 

Dulwich  Grove,  50 
Dunwick,  244 
Dyer,  J.,  141,  145,  166;   Wordsworth 

on,  166 

Eamont,  river,  29,  30 
Eastbury,  162 
Edge  Hill,  128,  200 
Edgware,  289 
Edgware  Road,  289,  290 
Elbingerode,  77 
Elegiac  Sonnets,  210 
Elegy  in  a  Country  Churchyard,   142, 
155,  185,  188 


Elegy  on  W.  Hervey,  134 

Eloisa  to  Abelard,  152 

Elthara  Palace,  276,  285-288 

Enfield,   301;    the    church,    304;    the 

woods,  308 

English  Garden,  143,  194 
English  Poetry,  History  o/(T.  Warton), 

lyy 

Enoch  Arden,  269,  272 
Enthusiast  (Warton),  143,  197 
Enthusiast  (Whitehead),  144 
Epistle  from  Copenhagen,  153 
Epistle  from  Italy,  1 78 
Evening,  Ode  to,  142,  182 
Evening  Star,  The,  67 
Evening  Walk,  The,  29 
Excursion,  The  (Mallet),  141,  175 
Excursion,  The  (Wordsworth),  31,  32, 

34,  42,  253 

Faerie  Queene,  318 
Falconer,  W.,  142,  191 
Fancy,  Ode  to,  197 
Farringford,  254,  261 
Fleece,  The,  141,  166,  170 
Flowers,  10 

Forest  Hill,  119,  121,  126 
Fourteen  Sonnets,  211 
Friend,  The,  42 
Froissart,  277,  281 
Froissart  in  Britain,  281 

Garden  of  Boccaccio,  81 

Gardener's  Daughter,  The,  268 

Garth,  Sir  S.,  128,  153 

Gay,  J.,  140,  153 

Geraint  and  Enid,  257,  265 

Glencoe,  95 

Glennie,  Dr.,  50 

Goldsmith,  O.,  143,  177;  and  Nature, 

181  ;  289,  290  ;  at  Hyde  House  Farm, 

292 ;  293,  298 
Goody  Blake,  32 
Grainger,  J.,  142,  175 
Granta,  A  Medley,  53 
Grasmere  Rectory,  42 
Gray,  T.,  142,  148  ;  on  Green's  poetry, 

157 ;   on   Thomson's,  165 ;    177 ;   on 

Collins  and  Warton,  185  ;  185,  196 
Greater  London,  291 
Green,  M.,  142,  155 ;  Gray's  opinion 

of,  157 
Grongar  Hill,  128,  141,  167 

Hagley,  161 
Hamlet,  The,  199 


INDEX 


361 


Hampton,  Lucy,  13 

Harrow,  51 

Hawkshead,  26 

Heathlands,  243,  244 

Henry  VIII.,  129  ;  and  Anne  Boleyn, 

130 

Highland  Clans,  94 
Highland  Mary,  346 
Highlands,  47,  48,  94,  97 
Hints  from  Horace,  53 
Holford  Wood,  75 
Holywell  Glen,  260 
Hop-Garden,  The,  142 
Horton,  119,  121,  126 
Humphrey  Clinker,  298 
Hundred  Years'  War,  effects,  of,  278 
Hurdis,  J.,  214 
Hyde  House  Farm,  291,  297 
Hymn  before  Sunrise,  78 
Hyperion,  310 

UPenseroso,  119,  120,  124,  125 
In  Memoriam,  255,  259,  270,  272 
Irish  music,  333 
Islington,  294 

Jago,  R.,  144,  206 

James  I.,  95 

James  VI.,  95 

James  VIII.  (Pretender),  95 

Johnson,  S.,  on  Cooper's  Hill,  127,  133  ; 

146  ;  on  T.  Warton,  201,  293 
Jones,  Sir  W.,  119 

Katrine,  Loch,  96 

Keats,  J.,  Shelley's  lament  for,   115; 

145,  146,  149,  300  ;  his  early  reading, 

307 

Keepsake,  The,  78 
Kensington  Garden,  128 
Kentish  Town,  295 
Kilve,  river,  76 
Kubla  Khan,  75 

La  Belle  Dame  Sans  Merci,  310 
Lac  de  Gaube,  263 
Lady  of  the  Lake,  96 
L'Allegro,  119,  120,  123,  125 
Lamb,  Charles,  294 
Langhorne,  128,  143,  204 
Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel,  93 
Leasowes,  The,  174 
Leeds  (Kent),  281 
Legend  of  Montrose,  94 
Le'ny,  Pass  of,  93,  94 
Leven  Water,  176 


Lewesdon  Hill,  128,  145,  213 

Lightning,  20 

Lime-Tree  Bower,  74 

Lines  to  my  Sister,  36 

Lissoy,  178 

Locksley  Hall,  259 

London,  view  of,  from  Cooper's  Hill, 

130;  297 

London  Bridge,  20,  68,  274 
Long  Story,  The,  185,  190 
Lord  of  the  Isles,  97 
Lover's  Journey,  The,  242 
Lover's  Resolution,  The,  78 
Lover's  Tale,  The,  258,  260 
Lowes,  Loch  of  the,  91 
Lycidas,  125 
Lyrical  Ballads,  35,  140 
Lyttelton,  Lord,  143 

Mablethorpe,  257 

Magna  Charta  Island,  129 

Magni,  Villa,  112 

Mallet,  D.,  175 

Manfred,  62 

Mariana,  257 

Marmion,  86,  89,  93 

Marriage  of  Geralnt,  The,  265 

Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  95 

Mason,  W.,  143,  194 

Maud,  260,  261,  262,  272 

May  Queen,  The,  259 

Melrose,  93 

Memory,  Ode  to,  255,  257 

Middleham  Castle,  265 

Miller's  Daughter,  The,  261 

Milton,    J.,    and    Nature,    116;     his 

memory,  117  ;  at  Horton,  121 
Minchmuir,  93 
Minstrel,  The,  201 
Mitford,  M.  R.,  210 
Moonlight,  67,  247 
Moore,  T.,  325  ;  his  poetry,  337 
Mountains  and  mountain  scenery,  21, 

33 
Muston  Parsonage,  248 

Napier,  Lord,  92 
Needless  Alarm,  233 
Nether  Stowey,  33,  71 
Newstead  Abbey,  49,  56 
Newton,  Rev.  J.,  216 
Night,  17 
Nocturnal  Reverie,  The,  141 

Old  Dover  Road,  276 
Old  Kent  Road,  276 


362 


POETS'  COUNTRY 


Olney,  215 
Onomatopoeia,  271 
Otter,  river,  69 
Ottery  St.  Mary,  68 
Oxford,  128 

Pains  of  Sleep,  77 

Paradise  Lost,  117,  119 

Paradise  Regained,  117 

Parker,  Margaret,  50 

Parnell,  T.,  141,  154 

Passions,  Ode  on  the,  181 

Penrith,  28 

Penrith  Beacon,  29 

Penshurst,  133,  134,  317,  321 

Penshurst,  133 

Persian  Eclogues,  181 

Perth,  94 

Perth,  Fair  Maid  of,  94 

Philips,  A.,  140,  153 

Philips,  J.,  140,  153 

Pine-tree,  5 

Pixies,  Songs  of  the,  69 

Pleasures  of  Imagination,  Tlw,  172 

"  Poets'  Corner,"  288 

Pope,  A.,  on  Cooper's  Hill,  127;  on 
Cowley,  137  ;  140,  150 ;  at  Binfield, 
150  ;  his  study  of  Nature,  151 ;  194, 
197 

Pope,  Essay  on  (J.  Warton's),  197 

Posthumous  Tales,  250 

Powell,  Mary,  120 

Power  of  Harmony,  The,  142 

Prelude,  The,  25,  27-28 

Princess,  The,  263,  264,  271 

Prisoner  of  Chillon,  The,  62 

Prolusiones  Oratorios,  123 

Quantock  Hills,  37,  76 
Queen  Mob,  103 

Racedown  Lodge,  30 

Rainbow,  18 

Rasselas,  146 

Recollections  of  Love,  81 

Reflections  on  Place  of  Retirement,  70 

Remorse,  73 

Retirement,  232 

Revolt  of  Islam,  107,  253 

Richard  II.,  277 

Rob  Roy,  96 

Robertson,  Mary,  47 

Romaunt  of  the  Rose,  284,  285 

"  Rose,  The"  (Chaucer's  house),  288 

Rotha,  river,  30 

Ruins  of  Rome,  167,  170 


Runnymede,  129 

Rural  Elegance,  175 

Rural  Sports,  153 

Ruskin,  J.,  on  Shakespeare,  5  ;  51 

Rydal  Mount,  28,  43 

Saddleback,  78 

St.  James's  Park,  133 

St.  Mary's  Loch,  89 

Sandyknowe,  84 

Savage,  R.,  140,158 

Sea  FeU,  79 

Scott,  J.,  144,  146,  208 

Scott,  W.,  40;  and  Nature,  83;  and 
Scotch  rivers,  84 ;  and  Edinburgh, 
84  ;  his  interest  in  the  past,  84-88,  95  ; 
and  Border  scenery,  88 ;  and  High- 
lands, 89,  94  ;  his  burial  in  Dryburgh 
Abbey,  99  ;  contrasted  with  Shelley, 
100 ;  145,  149 

Scottish  rivers,  83,  345 

Sea,  the,  21,  246,  258 

Sea  Dreams,  262 

Sea-gulls,  246 

Seasons,  The,  141,  164 

Shakespeare,  W. ,  1 ;  his  eye  for  Nature, 
2,  24 ;  and  Stratford,  3 ;  sports,  6 ; 
flowers,  10 ;  birds,  14 ;  dawn,  14 ; 
sunset,  16;  night,  17;  rainbow,  18; 
storm,  19 ;  lightning,  20 ;  mountain 
scenery,  21  ;  the  sea,  21 

Sharp,  Archbishop,  85 

Shelley,  P.  B.,  and  Nature,  100; 
his  youthful  reading,  101 ;  English 
landscape  by,  103 ;  his  descriptive 
power,  110  ;  at  Villa  Magni,  112  ;  his 
lament  for  Keats,  115  ;  145,  148,  149 

Shenstone,  W.,  143;  Johnson  on,  174, 
175 

Shepherd's  Calendar,  317 

Shipwreck,  The,  143,  191 

Shole  Bay,  262 

Shottery,  9,  13 

Sidney,  Sir  P.,  315 

Simon  Lee,  34 

Skene,  Loch,  91 

Skiddaw,  26 

Slaughden  Quay,  240 

Sleep  and  Poetry,  146 

Smailholm  Tower,  84,  85 

Smart,  C.,  142 

Smith,  Charlotte,  210 

Smollett,  T.,  176 

Solitude,  175 

Somersby,  254,  255 

Somerville,  W.,  153 


INDEX 


363 


Sonnets  (Bowles),  145 

Sonnets  (Shakespeare),  13 

Southwark,  275 

Spenser,  E.,  288,  313 

Spleen,  The,  155 

Sports,  6 

Spring,  Ode  on,  185,  188 

Stewart  of  Invernahyle,  96 

Stockworth  Mill,  261 

Stoke  Manor,  190 

Stoke  Poges,  185,  186 

Storm,  19 

Stow,  J.,  314 

Stowe,  162 

Stratford,  4,  6,  13 

Strean,  Dr.,  on  Deserted  Village,  179 

Studley  Park,  128,  143,  204 

Sugar-Cane,  The,  142,  175 

Sunset,  16 

Superstitions  in  the  Highlands,  Ode  on, 

184 
Swift,  J.,  on  Cooper's  Hill,  127 

"  Tabard,  The,"  275 

Tales  in  Verse,  243,  248 

Tales  of  the  Hall,  248,  249 

Task,  The,  143,  217,  220,  225,  236 

Tennyson,  A.,  145,  146,  148,  149;  his 
range  and  method,  253  ;  and  Lincoln- 
shire, 255 ;  his  exactness  of  detail, 
266 ;  his  onomatopoeia,  271 ;  his 
symbolism,  272 

Thames,  river,  20,  68 ;  from  Cooper's 
Hill,  131  ;  Pope  on,  151,  319 

Thomas  the  Rhymer,  87 

Thomson,  J.,  141,  142,  145,  148,  159 ; 
his  house  at  Richmond,  162 ;  Gray 
on,  165 

Thomson,  Ode  on  the  Death  of,  182,  183 

Tickell,  T.,  140,  153 

Tilbury,  320 

Tintern  Abbey,  38 

Tiptoft,  Lady,  306 

Town  End,  38 


Traveller,  The,  143,  177 
Trossachs,  96 
Trumpington,  261 
Tweed,  river,  83,  93 

Unwin,  Mr.  and  Mrs.,  216 
Upton,  189 

Vicar  of  Wakefield,  The,  294 
Village,  The,  145,  243,  251 
Virgil,  140 

Waller,  E.,  his  indifference  to  Nature, 
133 

Walter,  Cuming,  260 

Wanderer,  The  (Savage),  158 

Wandering  Jew,  The,  102 

Warton,  J.,  143  ;  Gray  on,  185  ;  197 

Warton,  T.,  144,  198 ;  his  works,  199 

Warwick  House,  154 

Watchman,  The,  70 

Watling  Street,  289 

Weston,  144,  215,  218 

Whirl-Blast,  The,  35 

Whitehead,  W.,  143 

William  and  Margaret,  175 

Winchester,  Lady  Anne,  141 

Windsor  Castle,  128 

Windsor  Forest,  128,  140,  151,  153,  178 

Witch  of  Atlas,  The,  109 

Woods,  74 

Wordsworth,  Bishop,  43 

Wordsworth,  Dorothy,  29,  30,  32,  35, 
44,  72,  76 

Wordsworth,  W.,  1;  his  homes,  25; 
Penrith,  28  ;  Racedown,  30  ;  Alfox- 
den,  33-37,  72;  Dove  Cottage  or 
Town  End,  38 ;  Allan  Bank,  41  ; 
Grasmere  Rectory,  42;  Rydal  Mount, 
43  ;  marriage,  41 ;  death  of  children, 
43 ;  and  Coleridge,  75 ;  143, 145, 148, 
149  ;  on  Dyer's  Fleece,  166 

Yarrow,  Dowie  Dens  of,  85 
Young  Friend,  To  a,  71 


THE   END 


Printed  by  R.  &  R.  CLARK,  LIMITED,  Edinburgh. 


JNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFOENIA  LIBRABY, 
BEEKELEY 


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14 


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YD    12877 


